The SE is a good idea and
The iPhone SE makes sense if you can get beyond the haze of tripe like "OMG, Apple has lost its mojo!" or "Apple is becoming the next" (fill in the blank)...
Defying bigness: More importantly, it's defying the design trend of bigger-is-better. I like Apple when it's counterintuitive. Small has its place. For example, think back to the Motorola StarTAC. Consumers liked it because it was small and stylish. (And a refreshing advancement from Gordon Gekko's behemoth.) If you can't remember that far back, you could hold a cell phone like the StarTAC (and analogous phones today) in the palm of your hand and jam it in your pocket. Likewise, the iPhone SE is palmable and jammable. (In addition to being more usable with one hand.)
A novel small iPhone design: I have no idea if Apple would ever go this far but there could be a market for a small, light (let's say under 80 grams), thin (maybe around 6mm), 3.5-inch to 4-inch phone. Think of it this way. Technology trends have an ebb and flow. Big is now in but small could be next. Let's say Apple came up with a bezel-less AMOLED-based 4-inch design that had no "blank" (display-less) spaces on the top or bottom, as the SE does, and no physical button. Kind of like my Moto X but smaller. So, in effect, while maintaining the same width/height of the SE, the total display real estate would be between a 4-inch and hypothetical 4.5-inch iPhone SE.
Yes, large phones like the iPhone 6s Plus (which I also own) are popular. But part of Steve Jobs genius was that he defied conventional wisdom and made consumers want what they think they didn't need. And, lest we forget, smaller iPhones could also be cheap.
Any takers?
