Samsung and Google have both already raised flagship phone prices this year to cover the memory shortage. Apple has not, and that may be about to change. Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman writes in the 23 August edition of his Power On newsletter that Apple is considering raising the price of the iPhone 18 series launching next month, with a $100 increase named as one plausible shape for it. A rise of that size would put the iPhone 18 Pro’s starting price at $1,199.
Nothing here is decided or announced. Gurman’s own framing, as relayed by iClarified, is that the exact increase remains unclear and $100 is one possible scenario rather than a settled figure. As of 24 August, Apple has not publicly addressed the report.
Why the iPhone 18 price matters to Android buyers
Because both of Apple’s biggest rivals already moved. Samsung and Google each raised the price of their latest flagships by roughly $100 in response to higher component costs, and Gurman says Apple has been watching how those increases landed. That is the part worth sitting with: the memory-driven cost increase that androidpure has now tracked through Google’s Pixel 11 pricing, Amazon’s device line and Counterpoint’s full-year shipment forecast has not spared the one company with the most pricing power in the industry.
The mechanism is the same one already covered here in detail: DRAM and NAND contract prices have climbed sharply as AI data-centre buyers absorb supply, and every phone maker pays it. What changes when Apple moves is the ceiling. A $1,199 iPhone 18 Pro makes a $1,199 Android flagship look ordinary rather than expensive, and it removes the competitive pressure that has been the main reason Android OEMs held any line at all.
What the report actually says
- The increase is under consideration, not confirmed. Gurman describes Apple as weighing a rise, with the real question being how much rather than whether.
- $100 is the reference point, drawn from rivals. It is anchored to what Samsung and Google did, not to anything Apple has said.
- Apple appears to be absorbing part of the cost. On its most recent earnings call Apple warned that higher component costs would pressure gross margins, which both write-ups read as the company eating some of the increase rather than passing all of it on.
- It would be mild by Apple’s own recent standards. Two months ago Apple raised prices across Macs, iPads and other products by an average of about 23 percent, including a $200 rise on the MacBook Air and $500 on the Mac Studio. IT之家 additionally reports a $150 increase on the iPad Air and renders the potential iPhone rise as about 9 percent; iClarified carries neither figure.
- Monthly payments are named as a cushion. Gurman notes, per both write-ups, that a subscription-style programme spreading a device’s cost over monthly instalments would blunt how sharply buyers feel a one-off increase. iClarified names it as Apple Upgrade; the Chinese report refers only to a new subscription plan.
The part the framing hides
A monthly payment plan is the detail to be sceptical of, whichever company offers it. Spreading a higher price over instalments does not make the phone cheaper; it makes the increase harder to notice, converts an outright purchase into a rolling commitment, and ties the customer to the vendor’s upgrade cadence rather than to the hardware’s actual working life. Android buyers have seen the same playbook from carriers for years. When the industry’s answer to a higher sticker price is a smaller monthly one, the increase has not gone anywhere. It has just been made harder to see.
One caution on the sourcing: this chain has a single origin. Both write-ups above are independent summaries of the same paywalled Bloomberg newsletter, not independent reporting. The iPhone 18 series is expected to launch next month, at which point the actual prices settle the question.
Source: Mark Gurman, Power On (Bloomberg), via IT之家 and iClarified
