iPhone SE: Apple’s new, cheapest iPhone ever sells out across the US

The small phone — which features most of the guts of the iPhone 6s in the body of a 5 — comes as Apple looks to soothe worries about declining growth in its handset sales

A man tries out the iPhone SE in Tokyo (Tomohiro Ohsumi/Getty Images)

Apple appears to have sold out of its newest handset, the iPhone SE.

The company launched the new phone — which features the insides of the iPhone 6s in the body of a 5 — at the end of last month and demand appears to have been such that it is now unavailable until the end of the month.

At the time of launch, Apple said that the phone was its cheapest ever and that it had launched it as a way of encouraging users of smaller, 4-inch iPhones as well as Android handsets to upgrade. That aim came at a time of intense speculation about Apple’s iPhone line, with worries that the huge growth seen after the launch of the iPhone 6 could stall.

In the US online store, handsets are not available to pick up until the end of the month. Availability seems slightly better for the smaller 16GB model over the larger and more expensive 64GB one.

In the UK, the phones are also not expected to deliver until towards the end of April. The same appears to be true in other international markets.

Many phone networks are still stocking the handset, but Apple is the primary way of buying the phone outright and without being locked to a specific carrier.

The new phone starts at £359 in the UK, making it the cheapest handset that Apple has ever sold.