Does that demand exist at a scale that makes sense for a $1T company with many rapidly-growing product lines and high product margin expectations, though?

they don't actually know the demand for all these new iphone Xx models. it's an educated guess. and... to some degree, a portion of the market will go wherever apple suggests they go anyway.

apple got caught 'behind' in the 'bigger phone size' competition, and it seems they'll keep going bigger.

you could keep the 'high margin' on an se-sized phone - people would buy it anyway, because they want that size.

Yes.

Guess how much a 128GB SE goes for now, if you can even get one?

To add to this, the SE represented 8% of their iPhone sales so far this year.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/804398/us-iphone-sales-b...

Nothing is clear at all, just because you want it to be true.