Analysts warn the iPhone 18 price hike could be worse than we thought
Analysts warn the iPhone 18 price hike could be worse than we thought
Publish Date: 2026-06-27 01:05:00
Source Domain: www.tomsguide.com
The list of tech companies that increased their prices just got a little longer, now that Apple has instigated hefty price hikes on most of its products. Apple CEO Tim Cook warned us this was coming, and now the company has confirmed that the rising cost of memory and storage means it’s unable to shoulder the increased cost of components.
“The rapid expansion of AI data centers has created an extraordinary surge in demand for memory and storage,” Apple said in a statement. “We have never seen a component price increase this much, this quickly.” Apple also added that it has “reached a point where we need to begin raising prices on a number of products.”
Emphasis on the word “begin,” because Apple already increased the price of almost its entire product lineup. That includes MacBooks, desktop Macs, iPads, Vision Pro and even the less-memory-hungry devices like Apple TV 4K and Homepod.
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The only products that haven’t suffered a price hike are iPhones, AirPods and the Apple Watch — and I honestly don’t believe that those prices will stay at their current levels for very long.
iPhones were spared, but don’t expect it to last long
(Image credit: Front Page Tech)
The question as to why Apple has insulated the iPhone from the first wave of price hikes is down to the device’s popularity. As analyst Francisco Jeronimo, Vice President of Client Devices at IDC, noted in a statement sent to Tom’s Guide, the iPhone is Apple’s personal cash cow. Phones make up around 50% of Apple’s business, so it makes sense that Apple will do whatever it can to protect iPhone sales volume.
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It should be obvious to everyone that increasing the price of a product is not the route you go down if you want to make your devices more appealing to consumers.
However, those prices are unlikely to stay static for long. As Jeronimo notes, Apple is likely protecting the iPhone “while it works out how hard it can push prices…
