Apple’s products are going to cost more, the company has confirmed. But which products and how much hasn’t been revealed. However, a new report claims it could mean the iPhone 18 Pro will cost $200 or more on top of current pricing.
Apple CEO Tim Cook told The Wall Street Journal on June 17 that change is coming. “Unfortunately, price increases are unavoidable,” he said. That’s down to the surging costs of memory and storage chips.
He also said he’d never seen a commodity price swing like this. “This is a hundred-year flood. I’ve never seen anything like it in any area in over 40 years,” he explained. This may at least mean the next price increases could be one-offs.
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While he also said that which products would be affected is something the company is working through, a new report from the same publication makes “an educated guess,” of what that will mean.
“While Apple doesn’t report the gross profit margins on individual products, the TechInsights research suggests the margin on the $1,099 iPhone 17 Pro was a tidy 47%. To maintain that profit margin for the iPhone 18 Pro, based on estimated costs, the company would have to charge $1,371. Because the company likes standardized pricing, the starting price tag would more likely be $1,299, yielding a 44% gross profit,” the WSJ said.
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And that’s not all. Since the predicted new camera system with variable-aperture camera is thought to cost half as much again as previous models, Apple could put the price up further, starting the iPhone 18 Pro at “$1,399 — or higher,” the report went on.
Before you reach for a stiff drink to calm your nerves, I’d point out that this is conjecture and nobody knows how Apple will spread out the increased costs.
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Other brands, such as Samsung, for instance, have already increased prices on their latest models, and Apple has not. The iPhone is Apple’s biggest seller and I suspect it would rather take a cut to its profit share than introduce a $300 price lift.
That’s not to say there won’t be some increase — Cook wouldn’t have gone out of his way this early in the year to spell this out except to prepare the ground so it’s not a surprise this fall — but I think it may fall more lightly on the company’s most popular product than elsewhere.
I suspect there will be more briefings in the run-up to the iPhone launch in September, which will give us more clarity.
Bottom line: expect to dig deeper to buy the next iPhone.