Why Apple probably shouldn't update the iPhone 16e every year

Apple is quite secretive about the sales numbers of individual products, so we have to make do with revenue figures for entire categories. But even with those vague numbers, most analysts agree that this year’s iPhone 16e is shifting considerably more units than the 3rd-gen iPhone SE it (sort of) replaced.

In the latest edition of his Power On newsletter, widely followed Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman says this is not surprising.

“For fans of the SE,” he explains, “the jump from the second generation to the third was quite minimal [that’s a polite way to put it], so there was less reason to upgrade. The iPhone 16e–while basically a stripped-down iPhone 16–is a meaningful redesign from the SE 3.”

Gurman adds that Apple marketed the 16e in a smarter and more appealing way than the 2022 iteration of the SE. By tying it in with the premium 16-series phones rather than the budget SE line, the company added “quite a bit more allure” in markets such as China.

That’s all good news for Apple, but Gurman says he is more interested in a different question: Whether Apple will update the “e” line of iPhones once a year, as it does with the flagship handsets. The SE line, by contrast, was updated quite sporadically: those phones arrived in 2016, 2020, and 2022 before the 16e debuted in 2025.

Gurman doesn’t claim to be sure whether the “e” iPhones will follow an annual launch cadence, as he says Apple itself hasn’t made a final decision. But he points out that competing firms such as Samsung and Google release new budget phones one or more times per year, and on this basis concludes that a yearly upgrade cycle for the iPhone 16e and its successors “makes a lot of sense.”

But I’m not convinced it does. By Gurman’s own logic, the iPhone 16e got a positive reception specifically because it represented a significant upgrade on and a major change from the 3rd-gen SE, a device that cost far less and came out three years earlier. That absolutely wouldn’t be the case if Apple launched an iPhone 17e in April 2026, basing it on what looks to be a cautious set of 17-series handsets this September. The phone will probably be quite similar to the 16e, and while that might appeal to owners of the iPhone 13 or 14, it wouldn’t represent the exciting sea change that won the 16e such apparent commercial success.

The problem is that you can launch regularly, or you can release phones that are a big improvement on their predecessors, but you can’t do both. Or rather, you can, but Apple doesn’t like to, because regular substantive refreshes cut into profit margins and make future launches more difficult to navigate.

On balance, I think it probably does make sense to carve out a predictable annual launch cadence for the “e” line, so that customers can learn to expect a new mid-market phone every spring and adjust their buying plans accordingly. But this wouldn’t guarantee a smash hit every year like the rest of the iPhone line. In making the decision, Apple will, I’m sure, be factoring in the likelihood that a 17e in April 2026 would be a great deal less interesting to customers than the 16e was this April.

But here’s one final point. Apple could make the 17e instantly appealing by reversing some of the more extreme compromises it made to ensure the 16e supported Apple Intelligence. In order to achieve that, the 16e was equipped with an A18 chip and 8GB of RAM, a far more powerful (and costly) setup than it otherwise needed. But now that the bar has been cleared, those primary specs don’t need to change in 2026. Apple could release a 17e with the same chip, the same RAM, and focus its resources on restoring MagSafe, perhaps. Or adding a second camera lens. Or even switching from a notch to the Dynamic Island.

These changes, if they’re logistically feasible, would ensure a second successful “e” launch. But this strategy has a limited shelf life, because the 18e would need to improve on that. And in the end, switching to a long-term annual release strategy means accepting that quite a lot of your products are going to be received with a yawn, not a yell.