Markets & Business
New iPhones arrive, so Apple raises prices on older models
Apple raised prices on its existing iPhone models by $100 as it unveiled the iPhone 18 and its first foldable, the iPhone Duo.
Apple, at its Surprise and Shine event on Wednesday, unveiled its new iPhone 18 lineup and its first foldable iPhone, the iPhone Duo. But amid the attention on Apple’s newest and most expensive devices, the company also made another change: raising the price of its existing iPhone models by $100.
Starting Wednesday, customers noticed higher prices for existing models on Apple’s online store, including starting prices of $799 for the iPhone 16, $699 for the iPhone 17e, $899 for the iPhone 17, and $1,099 for the iPhone Air. The price increases are even steeper in some international markets — in India, for example, prices have reportedly risen by around 20.5%. Apple also discontinued the iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max.
The strategy is unusual for Apple: traditionally, the arrival of a new iPhone generation has meant older models get cheaper. Still, the hike wasn’t entirely unexpected — speculation had been building that Apple could raise prices as it introduced its next-generation lineup. One of the biggest pressures is a global shortage of memory and storage chips, as demand for those components has surged with AI companies and cloud providers building out increasingly massive data centers.
In a June interview with The Wall Street Journal, former Apple CEO Tim Cook acknowledged that rising component costs could eventually force the company to rethink its pricing strategy, saying Apple could no longer fully absorb the rising costs of memory and storage chips. About a week after those comments, the company raised prices across its Mac and iPad lineups. Apple may also be trying to stay competitive with rising prices from rivals like Samsung and Google, and it may be counting on its new Upgrade program — which lets customers spread the cost of an iPhone through monthly payments — to cushion the impact of the hike, making it less noticeable to consumers.
Why it matters
The hike signals that AI-driven memory and storage demand is now flowing directly into consumer hardware prices — a cost pressure that could keep pushing device prices up well beyond Apple’s own lineup.