When Apple announced the new Apple Watch Series 10 at its latest event on Monday, September 9, eyebrows were raised because it wasn’t accompanied by Apple Watch Ultra 3. A new report claims that it will come, next year, and so will the Apple Watch SE—another surprise absentee from the event.
It was reasonable that we had thought the Ultra 3 was inbound. After all, there was only one year’s space between the first and second iterations, so it looked like annual upgrades were the cadence to expect. Apple Watch SE has never had annual replacements. Instead, we got a new color for Watch Ultra 2, and a spiffily attractive black finish it is.
Both Ultra 3 and SE 3 will come as part of the 2025 range, according to Ming-Chi Kuo, analyst at TFI Securities, who posted on X. Kuo was right about Ultra 3 not coming for a long time, it turns out, predicting as far back as October 2023 that “the likelihood of Apple updating the new Apple Watch Ultra in 2024 is decreasing.”
In the new post, Kuo reaffirmed this, saying, “Apple Watch Ultra 3 was absent from this year’s media event, which is in line with my prediction from about a year ago.”
They then went on to say “The 2025 new Apple Watch models will include the Ultra 3 and SE upgrade version.”
There’s quite a bit of wriggle room here. Apple has only ever released new Watch models in the fall—apart from the first Watch which was announced in the fall, on September 9, 2024, exactly 10 years before the latest keynote—so the suggestion is we will have to wait a year for both Apple Watch Ultra 3 and Apple Watch SE 3rd generation.
This makes sense to me, especially if the rumored all-new design with plastic case turns out to be true. Since Apple Watch Series 11 (and that’s the first time I’ve typed those words) will likely match the design of Series 10 more or less, it makes sense that Apple Watch SE could have its moment to shine.
Or maybe there’s a possibility that the SE could debut in the Spring, alongside a new iPhone SE, perhaps?
Either way, it looks like Apple Watch Ultra 3 will probably appear in around 12 months’ time, perhaps with a design upgrade of its own.
Read the full article here
