Your next iPhone is going to cost you. And if you didn't buy an existing model before Wednesday, you're going to pay more too.
On Tuesday, Apple announced the new iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max — with price tags $100 higher than the previous Pro models. It also announced the new foldable iPhone Duo, priced at $1,999. Apple has yet to announce the entry-level iPhone 18.
That wasn't the only pricing news. Apple also raised the price of older iPhones by $100, going back to the iPhone 16, the oldest generation that Apple still sells new in its online store.
The increase means that the iPhone Air, which Apple launched nearly a year ago, is now more expensive ($1,099) than it was when it debuted at $999. This is also true for the iPhone 17e and iPhone 17, which are now $699 and $899, respectively.
The iPhone 16 is $799, restoring it back to its debut price when Apple launched it in September 2024.
The iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max models will be available with 256GB, 512GB, 1TB, and 2TB storage capacities. The 2TB version of the Pro model costs $2399, and the Pro Max 2TB phone will run you $2499.
Both prices are above those of the 2TB iPhone 17 Pro Max, the previous most expensive iPhone on the market. Both of the top-of-the-line iPhone 18s still pale in comparison to the highest-tier iPhone Duo. The 2TB iPhone Duo will cost $3199.
The higher prices illustrate how the global memory shortage has stretched a company as dominant as Apple.
In his final earnings call as CEO, Tim Cook said that Apple had "reluctantly raised prices" of iPads and MacBooks due to the memory shortage.
"We did it because we're in what I would characterize as a 100-year flood on the memory pricing with exponential increases in memory prices," Cook said.
The memory shortage is largely driven by the AI revolution as chipmakers shift production away from chips designed for consumer products to the more specialized chips required for the data centers that power AI models.
In June, Apple increased the prices of iPads by up to 25% and Mac computers by as much as 20%. At the time, the cost of existing iPhone models remained unchanged.
Other companies, including some of Apple's competitors, have also hiked device prices.
Officials at Samsung and Google have said they raised prices on some of their smartphone models in part due to rising memory costs.
"There's never been an increase in memory prices like the world's going through right now," Google's vice president of devices and services, Shakil Barkat, said in July ahead of the release of the Pixel 11.
Ultimately, Google tacked $100 onto the Pixel 11, though it also doubled the storage of the baseline edition as Google discontinued the 128GB model.
The iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max will be available for preorder on Saturday, September 12, and then will go on sale on September 18.
