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Apple just had its biggest-ever quarter but it was still considered disappointing. Why?Apple on Tuesday said it sold 74.8 million million iPhones in the three months ending December 26, 2015. It's a record number of iPhones sold, but it represents less than 1 percent growth from the same period last year.In other words, the iPhone is slowing down, which may be a problem when two-thirds of the company's overall revenue comes from that one device. And while sales growth trajectories may be only of passing interest to the general public, the larger question becomes, What might come next? One possible answer: cheaper iPhones."The one big growth lever that's left is a cheaper iPhone," said Jan Dawson, chief analyst at technology research and advisory firm Jackdaw Research. That probably makes sense to anyone who regularly reads Apple rumor sites like 9to5Mac, which have suggested in recent weeks that Apple is preparing a 4-inch model likely called the "iPhone 5se" for a release as soon as March. This model, which would replace the still-on-sale iPhone 5s, would add newer features like Apple Pay and Live Photos but at a lower price (the iPhone 6s starts at $649 unlocked while the iPhone 5s starts at $450 unlocked).Apple's most recent "cheap" iPhone was the iPhone 5c, which was released in September 2013 (it started at $549 unlocked, compared to the iPhone 5s' $649 unlocked). Apple doesn't break down sales between different models of the iPhone, but educated guesses suggest it did… OK. It wasn't a blockbuster, but it wasn't the flop some had painted it as.But as Dawson notes, slowing iPhones sales aren't necessarily a signal that Apple is in any sort of trouble (it's kind of hard to be in trouble when you have $216 billion in the bank): All those Apple TVs and Apple Watches that Apple sells (which Apple doesn't explicitly break out, mind you) work best when used alongside an iPhone."So even if iPhone growth slows, the base of half a billion iPhone users will continue to be a source of growth for other product lines," Dawson said, giving Apple some breathing room as we transition into the iPhone 7 hype cycle.