Coming at Apple's March 21st event: 4-inch iPhone SE, 9.7-inch iPad Pro & new Apple Watch models
If Apple's most recent hardware events were about going bigger (larger iPhones, a jumbo iPad, and a new Apple TV), Apple's March 21st event is about going smaller.
Context & Ripple Effects
The March 21 lineup is the end point of a rumor arc that kept moving: back in February, 9to5Mac reported Apple was eyeing a March 15 event for an iPhone 5se and iPad Air 3, and January sourcing pointed to an iPad Air 3 debut alongside the small iPhone and new Watch models. What actually materialized swaps the Air 3 for a 9.7-inch iPad Pro — the Pro brand moving down in screen size just months after the jumbo iPad Pro launched — while keeping the 4-inch iPhone and Watch refresh intact.
The significance is positioning: after years of Apple going bigger, this event is explicitly about going smaller, and the follow-up coverage confirms the small iPhone carries flagship-class specs at a $399 starting price — a price point Apple has not recently occupied with current-generation internals.
First-order effects
- Buyers of compact phones get a 4-inch iPhone SE with iPhone 6S-class power, a 12MP camera and Apple Pay but no 3D Touch, available March 31 from $399 — directly serving the holdout small-phone market Apple had left behind since going larger.
Second-order effects
- The 9.7-inch iPad Pro displaces the rumored iPad Air 3, collapsing Apple's mid-size tablet tier into the Pro line and forcing the question of what remains for the Air brand; meanwhile the $399 SE pressures mid-priced Android handsets on specs-per-dollar.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, the SE becomes a recurring spring-refresh product rather than a one-off — six years later Bloomberg was still previewing a 5G iPhone SE at a March Apple event — institutionalizing a cheap, small-device tier refreshed on Apple's own cadence.
The trend: Apple's March slot is hardening into its annual mid-cycle refresh venue, where smaller and cheaper tiers — the iPhone SE chief among them — get updated separately from the fall flagships.