New iPhone SE Leaked Details Challenge Samsung’s Smartphone Dominance

Update November 17 with details on Apple’s in-house 5G modem shipping in the iPhone SE.

Apple is spending much of its marketing capital on Apple Intelligence, but the community is looking forward to another release. New details on the iPhone SE suggest the release is getting closer, and it could be a release that promotes Apple’s entry into the ferocious mid-range market and opens up Apple Intelligence to a broader audience.

The iPhone SE’s 5G Adventure

Update: Sunday November 17: Writing for 9to5Mac, Michael Burkhardt notes five products that Apple is expected to launch early in 2025. That list includes the iPhone SE (alongside the iPad 11, iPad Air, the M4 MacBook Air and new smart home products).

Tim Cook and his team have already upped the memory on the entry-level iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus models to accommodate the hefty demands of Apple Intelligence. It’s unlikely that the iPhone SE will be left out in the AI cold; more memory is pretty much a guarantee.

But Burkhardy also notes another specification that could bring long-term benefits to the iPhone family… Apple’s first in-house 5G Modem will debut on the iPhone SE, providing a critical volume of real-world data. This matches up with reports over the summer that Apple would skip the iPhone 16 for the new modem technology and hold it for a budget-focused handset in the upcoming Q1 release window.

With the same boosted memory, support for Apple Intelligence, and now the native modem, the iPhone SE looks more and more like the testbed and future of the iPhone rather than the iPhone 16.

When Will Apple Launch The iPhone SE?

Writing for Ajunews, Lee Seong-jin reports that one of the key suppliers of the iPhone SE hardware is gearing up to start a full production run in December. LG Innotek manufactures several components needed for the iPhone SE’s camera. Given the December commencement and LG Innotek’s historical pattern of starting production around three months before an iPhone hits the retail market, this backs up other information pointing to a mid-March 2025 release for the fourth edition of the iPhone SE.

The previous iPhone SE is still on sale, with the entry-level 64 GB storage model priced at $429, and $479 for the 128 GB model. That compares to the Pixel 8a, which is listed at $499 for the 128 GB model—although Google has been quick to offer discounts and generous trade-in values that bring the Pixel 8a price under that of the three-year-old SE.

Those in the Apple community who recall the various timelines will recognise that March date as the provisional release of iOS 18.3 and the final wave of apps in Apple’s awkwardly backronymed Apple Intelligence suite. This will complete the generative AI journey proposed at the Worldwide Developer Conference in the summer of 2024.

Apple is close to a year behind competing manufacturers in bringing generative AI to their smartphones; Google’s Pixel 8 family arrived in October 2023, while Samsung’s Galaxy AI was launched in January 2024. Since then, Google has updated the software—now marketed as Gemini AI—for the Pixel 9 family, and Samsung is widely expected to move to its second-generation AI in January 2025. Given Apple’s tentative steps with Apple Intelligence, the gap will continue to widen throughout the first half of 2025.

How The iPhone SE Can Close An AI Gap

Yet the launch of the iPhone SE could offer Apple something more attractive than a technological lead. It could offer a broader and more substantial user base. Samsung’s early arrival in the AI market with the hugely popular Galaxy S series has seen the South Korean company take an 82% market share in AI-capable smartphones.

Given the iPhone SE will be Apple’s first new smartphone targeted at the mid-range market in three years, Tim Cook and his team will be hoping that a pent-up demand for the mot-affordable iPhone will be unleashed and the SE will become a best-seller. If that’s the case then Apple should be in a good position to cut into Samsung’s AI lead and potentially overtake the South Korean company. If that proves to be the case, then the slow and limited pace of Apple Intelligence’s rollout can be balanced by claiming the top spot of AI-powered smartphones.

Now read the latest iPhone SE, Mac Mini and iCloud news in ’ weekly Apple news digest…