iPhone 18 Pro Starting Price May Stay Flat Despite RAM Crisis
iPhone 18 Pro Starting Price May Stay Flat Despite RAM Crisis
https://memeburn.com/iphone-18-pro-starting-price-may-stay-flat-despite-ram-crisis/
Publish Date: 2026-05-20 09:57:00
Source Domain: memeburn.com
Apple’s most expensive iPhones might cost the same next year — even as the rest of the phone industry quietly hikes prices. A new analyst report says the iPhone 18 Pro starting price could stay flat at $1,099 this fall, despite a global memory chip shortage that’s already squeezing Samsung, Xiaomi, and other Android brands. Here’s what’s behind the move, and the catch buyers should know about before September.
What the analyst actually said
GF Securities analyst Jeff Pu, who tracks Apple’s supply chain, told clients this week that he expects Apple to take an “aggressive pricing strategy” for the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max, via Mac Rumors. In plain terms, that means the starting price stays the same — or goes up by only a small amount — compared to the iPhone 17 Pro.
Today, the iPhone 17 Pro starts at $1,099 in the U.S., and the iPhone 17 Pro Max starts at $1,199. Both come with 256GB of storage and 12GB of RAM. Pu expects the iPhone 18 Pro to ship with the same 12GB of RAM, so you’re not losing memory to keep the price flat.
If you’ve followed Apple long enough, you know that holding a price isn’t exactly news. But this year, it kind of is.
Why “flat pricing” is a big deal in 2026
The whole smartphone industry is dealing with what some commentators have started calling the RAM crisis or RAMageddon. Memory chips have gotten much more expensive over the past year, mostly because AI companies are buying up huge amounts of RAM and storage for their data centers. That’s pushed up prices for everyone else, including phone makers.
Apple itself admitted this on its last earnings call, warning of “significantly higher memory costs” in the current quarter. So Apple isn’t immune. We’re just betting it can absorb more of the pain than its rivals can.
There are two reasons we think Apple can pull this off. First, it buys components at a much bigger scale than most Android brands, which gives it real leverage with memory suppliers….
