First-order effects

• Apple pulls the iPhone 8 and 8 Plus from its lineup immediately, leaving the new SE at $399 as the entry point for anyone who wanted a small, Touch ID-era iPhone.
• Buyers who would have picked the 8 are now steered to a device with the same design but a newer chip, at $100 below what the 8 line had occupied.

Second-order effects

• The SE inherits the 8's slot in Apple's price ladder, giving the company a sub-$400 option that fits the value-over-volume approach it already applied when it stopped selling older iPhones in India to chase value instead of volume.
• Every future iPhone launch now has a built-in replacement cycle for the compact tier: the SE line becomes the recycling bin for prior-generation designs, as later coverage shows when Apple discontinued the SE, iPhone 14, and 14 Plus in favor of the pricier iPhone 16e.

Third-order effects

• The pattern this sets — retire the old cheap model the day the new cheap model lands — is how Apple ratchets its entry price upward: five years later the SE itself was gone, and the lineup shrank to only 6.1-inch and larger screens with a $599 floor.
• If that ratchet continues, the compact budget iPhone becomes a recurring placeholder rather than a product line, with Apple's true entry point migrating higher each generation.