The iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max are just a couple weeks away from being announced, but be prepared for some bad news when it comes to the cost.
According to DigiTimes’ senior analyst Luke Lin, Apple has a “major price hike” planned for the upper tier models — driven by new components and an overall reduced demand for smartphones.
“Major price hike”
Now, what is meant by “major?” Lin doesn’t put any numbers to his claims, but he does explain why it’s potentially happening. The two problems here are reduced demand, and the cost of parts.
Hitting the first one, Lin claimed that Apple has ordered between 80 to 90 million iPhone 15 units for the first few months, down by up to 20 million on the iPhone 14 last year. This is an adjustment to the reduced smartphone demand from consumers, so in response, the company’s trying to extract more money from each purchase to make up for the shortfall.
The other part comes down to the likes of the titanium build and periscope lens of the Pro models of the iPhone 15. These materials and components are sure to drive the cost of manufacturing up, which naturally falls on the final price.
Outlook
This is the second time we’ve received a tip from a reliable source about this year’s Pro iPhones going up in price. It’s becoming more and more likely that this $100 increase (at least) is true.
Of course, we have to wait for the September event to get official confirmation of this, but it’s not looking good. The downturn of smartphone demand seems to be driving prices up all over the shop.
There’s no word on what this will do to the UK and EU pricing (since they already went up with the iPhone 14 models), but with a retail price jump in the US, I wouldn’t be surprised to see these rise too.
