{"id":712600,"date":"2026-06-19T01:22:20","date_gmt":"2026-06-19T01:22:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/712600\/"},"modified":"2026-06-19T01:22:20","modified_gmt":"2026-06-19T01:22:20","slug":"get-ready-for-a-more-expensive-iphone-18","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/712600\/","title":{"rendered":"Get Ready for a More Expensive iPhone 18"},"content":{"rendered":"

Apple CEO Tim Cook has given the company\u2019s legion of fans the bad news: your next iPhone or Mac will be more expensive due to spiking memory prices across the board. Now, every prospective iPhone 18 buyer has to ask themselves whether Apple Intelligence<\/a> is worth an extra $200\u2014potentially more?<\/p>\n

The outgoing Apple figurehead told The Wall Street Journal\u00a0in an\u00a0interview<\/a> posted late Wednesday that, despite his best efforts to keep RAM prices from hitting consumers, \u201cthe situation has become unsustainable.\u201d In other words, Apple\u2019s margins will no longer make sense if it maintains its current prices.<\/p>\n

Just how much will the next iPhone 18 Pro cost? The Wall Street Journal suggested that the price tag will be close to $1,300<\/a>. That\u2019s $200 more than an iPhone 17 Pro<\/a>. But let\u2019s get one thing straight: only Apple determines the next price of your devices. It will have to balance user expectations with its own bottom line.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s less supply at a time when consumers want devices and the memory guys are passing along huge price increases,\u201d Cook told the publication, adding that Apple would need to see memory prices come down before consumer electronics can again return to the realms of affordability.<\/p>\n

Cook is set to retire as CEO Sept. 1, likely just a few weeks before Apple announces whatever it\u2019s got cooking on the iPhone 18 and\u2014according to a slew of rumors\u2014the long-awaited foldable<\/a>. Current VP of hardware engineering John Ternus will take up Cook\u2019s mantle, so he\u2019ll be the focal point of these inevitable price hikes. This new iPhone will inevitably be built with Apple Intelligence in mind. The irony, of course, is that AI is the main reason why that phone is getting more expensive.<\/p>\n

Apple has been more resistant to memory price fluctuations than many manufacturers, largely because it has such a strong command of its supply chain. The company can normally leverage its dominance in computing to get the best deals, but that\u2019s evidently no longer the case. Memory manufacturers\u2014namely Micron, Samsung, and SK Hynix\u2014have retooled their businesses to supply the high-bandwidth memory (HBM) necessary for AI data center projects. As a result, their profit margins and stock prices<\/a> have soared to the point that they can ignore any old partners\u2019 pleas for more memory.<\/p>\n

Earlier this year, Apple shipped a new iPad Air<\/a> with M4 and a new iPhone 17e<\/a> without raising prices<\/a>. The latest MacBook Air <\/a>models cost $100 more than previous versions, but they also come with 512GB of storage, double the previous generation\u2019s starting capacity. The cracks have started to show in the past few months, starting when Apple removed its base-level $600 512GB Mac mini option from store shelves.<\/p>\n

The company can\u2019t keep pretending everything is okay in the world of gadgets. Even if memory prices come down in a year or two, gadget prices may not necessarily follow. If Apple sells enough $1,300 iPhones, it knows that\u2019s a price customers are willing to pay. Now, those customers will have to ask themselves if Apple Intelligence and an AI-ified Siri<\/a> are worth a significant chunk of change.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Apple CEO Tim Cook has given the company\u2019s legion of fans the bad news: your next iPhone or…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":493637,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[517,4536,4534,128569,165,74],"class_list":["post-712600","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mobile","tag-apple","tag-iphone","tag-mac","tag-macbooks","tag-mobile","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/712600","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=712600"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/712600\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/493637"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=712600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=712600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=712600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}