No 4-inch ‘iPhone 6c’ at Sept. 9 event, iPhone 5c to be discontinued, 5s/6/6 Plus staying
Mark Gurman / 9to5Mac :
Context & Ripple Effects
Ahead of the September 9 event, Mark Gurman reports Apple will not ship a 4-inch '6c': the plastic iPhones' 4-inch predecessor, the 5c, is being discontinued outright while the 5s stays on alongside the 6 and 6 Plus. That means Apple's small-phone line goes a full cycle without a refresh rather than getting the rumored 6c.
The gap turned out to be deliberate staging for a reboot rather than an exit: months later Apple readied the 5se for March/April with A9/M9 chips and always-on Siri, then dropped the '5' to sell it simply as the iPhone SE.
First-order effects
- Buyers who wanted a compact iPhone at the September launch are left choosing between the two-year-old 5s or moving up to the larger iPhone 6/6 Plus bodies — there is no new 4-inch hardware to buy.
- The 5c's discontinuation removes Apple's colorful, lower-cost plastic tier from the lineup, leaving the 5s as the entry point until the 6S models arrive.
Second-order effects
- Skipping the 6c sets up the spring 2016 replacement instead: the iPhone 5se revives the 4-inch size with modern internals (A9/M9, always-on Siri), effectively making the small-iPhone buyer wait two extra quarters for current-generation silicon.
- A one-cycle hole in the small-screen segment keeps the 5s alive longer than its normal shelf life would suggest, since Apple needs some sub-4-inch-priced option under the 6/6 Plus.
Third-order effects
- The pattern this starts — brief revivals of the small iPhone followed by quiet retreats — ends a decade later with Apple selling nothing smaller than 6.1 inches after killing the last 4.7-inch SE, suggesting small-form-factor demand was never durable enough to sustain a permanent SKU.
- If each small-iPhone experiment requires re-deriving components and marketing for a niche segment, the structural endpoint is a one-size-family lineup where screen size tiers replace form-factor tiers.
The trend: Apple's small-iPhone strategy cycles through revival and retreat — 5c out, 5s held over, SE resurrected, eventually discontinued — until the lineup consolidates entirely around large screens.