Apple slashes iPhone 6s, 6s Plus, 7, and 7 Plus prices by $100; iPhone SE drops by $50 to $349, now the lowest iPhone price point ever
Emil Protalinski / VentureBeat :
Context & Ripple Effects
Apple's budget story began with the original iPhone SE launching at $399 in 2016 as a small, powerful alternative to the flagship line. With the iPhone 8 and X now anchoring the top of the range, today's cuts reposition last year's flagships — 6s, 6s Plus, 7, 7 Plus — and push the SE down to $349, the lowest sticker an iPhone has ever carried.
The move matters because it shows how Apple manages its entry tier: rather than retiring old models outright, it discounts them into a ladder beneath the new flagships. That same playbook recurs across the coverage — from the India strategy of dropping the SE and 6s family to chase value over volume to the eventual 2025 discontinuation of the SE line entirely.
First-order effects
- Buyers shopping below flagship prices immediately get $100 off four prior-generation models and a $349 SE, giving Apple a three-band lineup spanning roughly $349 to flagship pricing on launch day.
- The SE becomes Apple's explicit price-floor product, undercutting even its own 2016 launch price by $50.
Second-order effects
- Android vendors competing in the sub-$400 band now face the cheapest new-condition iPhone ever sold, pressuring their mid-range pricing just as Apple's holiday quarter begins.
- Carriers and retailers gain a wider discount ladder to merchandise, letting Apple clear 6s/7 inventory without cannibalizing iPhone 8 demand.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, each generation's discounted predecessors become the de facto budget tier while the 'cheap' new model creeps upward — a trajectory visible in the corpus as the entry point moves from $349 here to $399 for the 2020 SE, then to a $599 iPhone 16e once the SE is discontinued.
- The budget iPhone shifts from a distinct small-device product line to a pricing role assigned to whatever model Apple is phasing out, ending with the SE's elimination altogether.
The trend: Apple is using discounted prior-generation iPhones as its entry tier while steadily ratcheting up the floor price of any newly designed budget model.