Apple’s iPhone 16e marketing and trade-in pricing is designed specifically to get iPhone 11 and iPhone 12 users to upgrade.
It’s not as if Apple will turn any buyer away, but it is very clearly setting out its stall that the iPhone 16e is for people who last bought an iPhone in 2019 or 2020. Six years on from the iPhone 11 and five years on from the iPhone, this is the best iPhone to upgrade to and Apple is aiming to sweeten the deal.
The first clue of the market Apple is aiming for with the new iPhone comes in the comparisons.
“iPhone 16e has the best battery life ever on a 6.1-inch iPhone,” says Apple’s press release, “lasting up to six hours longer than iPhone 11 and up to 12 hours longer than all generations of iPhone SE.”
Apple then compares the A18 processor in the iPhone 16e to the A13 Bionic processor in the iPhone 11. Unsurprisingly, the new processor is faster than the old, but Apple didn’t just search for the comparison that makes the A18 look the best.
Instead, Apple wants users of the A13 Bionic processor to know how much faster the new iPhone will feel. Given that iPhone batteries from 2019 or 2020 will be degrading by now, it also wants to present the new iPhone as having a miraculously longer-life charge.
If Apple hooks iPhone 11 or iPhone 12 users in with these features, it then works to seal the deal with the pricing. Whether users choose to trade in their old iPhones through Apple or through their carrier, Apple is promoting how much money they will save on the new model.
The new iPhone 16e starts at $599, which is significantly more than the $429 of the iPhone SE that it replaces. Where the old iPhone SE’s strongest selling point was that it was much lower cost than any other iPhone, the iPhone 16e is now only $200 less than the iPhone 16.
That’s still low enough make it a bargain, given what features it provides, but it’s also high enough to be a barrier. Except Apple itself is offering to take an old iPhone 11 for up to $120 in trade-in value, or up to $170 for an iPhone 12.
Those trade-ins make the iPhone 16e more affordable, but Apple doesn’t stop with its own offers. For once, it lists specific carrier offers, which in this case start with $400 for an iPhone 11 — or $599 for an iPhone 12.
So people who have held on to their iPhone 11 since 2019 can get the new iPhone 16e from $199. And iPhone 12 users can get it for free.
Way back in 2013, Apple’s Phil Schiller said that the company would never make a cheap iPhone. But that doesn’t mean it can’t arrange its pricing cleverly when it wants to target certain buyers.
