GoKawiilA new market intelligence report suggests that Apple will be paying four times more for iPhone 18 Pro memory than it did for last year’s model.
TrendForce says that Apple won’t be passing on the full impact to customers, and will be increasingly looking to Services revenue to offset higher hardware manufacturing costs …
Apple announced significant price increases across most of its products back in June, stating that it had done everything possible to delay this but no longer had any choice.
The company did not raise the prices of its existing iPhones at the time, but that’s expected to change next week. TrendForce pointed to dramatically increased memory costs for the new models.
For the 256GB Pro model, memory costs in 3Q26 are expected to be nearly 400% higher than a year earlier. Despite Apple’s efforts to negotiate lower prices for other components, these savings are unlikely to offset the resulting pressure on overall BOM costs. An increase in retail prices appears increasingly unavoidable while hardware costs remain elevated.
Apple is not expected to pass on the full increase in memory costs in iPhone pricing. Current expectations are for an increase of around $100 over the iPhone 17 Pro.
That’s because substantial price increases lead to even the biggest Apple fans upgrading their products less frequently. TrendForce says Apple will not want to sacrifice continued growth, also pointing to a weak macroeconomic environment leading to more cautious consumer spending.
The company predicts that the iPhone Ultra, Apple’s first folding model, could start at anything up to $2,299 with the top-end configuration exceeding $3,000.