Future Apple iPhone SE to be a cheaper version of the iPhone 14

Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, in his latest post, suggests that development of a future iPhone SE 4 has been restarted by Apple, and it will be fitted with an in-house designed 5G baseband chip. This will likely lead to a major decrease in the orders for Qualcomm from Apple but be beneficial to Apple’s hardware gross margin. The SE 4’s biggest update will likely be an OLED display, replacing the LCD one from the 6.1-inch iPhone 14, and also be fundamentally based on the 14. The baseband 5G chip will be based on a 4nm process, similar to 5nm, and will only work with Sub-6GHz. It is yet to be seen if the iPhone 16 series will have the Apple 5G baseband chip. The main obstacle to overcome is the technical issues with mmWave and satellite communication. If the SE 4’s mass production goes as planned in the first half of 2024, then the iPad and the Apple Watch, which have less demanding technical requirements, will also switch to using Apple’s baseband chips.