Apple supposedly plans to lower the iPhone SE's production

The iPhone SE 2022 is the latest budget phone from Apple, but allegedly, Apple is planning to lower the iPhone SE's production due to lower demand (via Reuters). According to Nikkei Asia's sources, Apple will possibly produce around 20% fewer iPhone SEs next quarter than it initially planned. This could indicate that Apple intends to build roughly 3 million fewer iPhone SEs than its original goals.

According to previous sales estimations, analysts expected Apple to sell 30 million iPhone SE units this year alone, but it looks like their estimations won't happen. Even analyst Ming-Chi Kuo tweeted that he cut his shipment estimation for the year to 15-20M, which was previously 25–30M sold units.

What could be the reason for iPhone SE 2022's lower demand?

According to Nikkei Asia's sources, the war in Ukraine and the inflation that is going on around the world are to blame for the lower demand for the latest iPhone SE.

Another reason could be that it isn't much of an upgrade compared with the previous model. Yes, it’s a big improvement that Apple put the A15 processor in the iPhone SE 2022, which is the same chipset used in the iPhone 13 series. Also, unlike the previous model, the iPhone SE 2022 supports 5G. But apart from that, there aren't many changes to convince customers to buy Apple's latest budget phone.