That’s how a smart company does it. Cover the whole range even if it may hurt sales in one segment. Better to cannibalize yourself than have the competition do it.

The higher priced phones have always been a status symbol. This won't change that for most of their target market IMO.

If you want the smallest iPhone available, and prioritize that in your purchasing, you no longer have to compromise on a wide array of features to do so.

That will spur a great deal of people who are refusing to buy iPhones to buy iPhones (+$$$) and convert a certain percentage of bigphone users to smallphone users at a lower pricepoint at the next upgrade cycle (-$$).

It is possible that Apple's usage statistics for old iPhones indicate that the + will be greater than the - while getting a bunch of users off of older lower-performing phones.

I have an iPhone 7 and I was reluctant to change because of FaceID, which I don’t like, and screen size of new models. This SE makes me think the opposite: I look forward changing. So it is a real game changer.

(I don’t buy Android because I’ve been bitten by the non-encrypted memory before, and Google isn’t serious about privacy).

I dont think I could ever go below the size of an iPhone X (5.8in vs 4.7in). That’s a pretty serious downgrade.

I think this competes better with people considering Android. You could do a lot with $400USD in that market.