iPhone 18 Pro Models Expected to See Major $300 Price Hike

Apple’s iPhone 18 Pro price hike is looking more concrete by the week, and the actual driver isn’t hype it’s memory. Analyst estimates now converge around a $200 retail increase for the Pro and Pro Max, which would push starting prices to roughly $1,299 and $1,399, up from $1,099 and $1,199 for the current iPhone 17 Pro lineup.

The clearest numbers come from component-cost research rather than guesswork. One estimate pegs Apple’s cost for the 12GB DRAM package at around $39 in the iPhone 17 Pro, climbing to roughly $145 for the iPhone 18 Pro, a 272% jump for the same quantity of memory. NAND flash storage is reportedly following a similar curve, estimated to rise from around $13 to $51 per unit. Stack those together with the new A20 Pro chip, and the bill of materials for a 1TB iPhone 18 Pro Max is now estimated to run nearly $300 higher than its predecessor, with NAND alone accounting for more than $250 of that on the largest storage tier.

It’s worth separating two numbers that get blurred together in headlines: the roughly $300 figure is the increase in what it costs Apple to build the phone, not necessarily what it charges. Most current retail estimates land closer to $200, since Apple rarely passes production costs through dollar-for-dollar.

The chip itself is a genuine architectural shift, not just a smaller number. The A20 Pro is expected to be Apple’s first chip built on TSMC’s N2 process, moving to gate-all-around nanosheet transistors instead of the FinFET design every iPhone chip has used until now a wafer that reportedly costs north of $20,000, well above the previous N3E process.

Context matters here too. Apple already raised prices on 14 other products in June, including every Mac and iPad, citing the same memory shortage directly, while leaving iPhone, Apple Watch, and AirPods pricing untouched in that round. That selective restraint is exactly why analysts expect the iPhone 18 Pro lineup to be next in line rather than exempt.

Not every analyst agrees Apple will raise the sticker price at all; some argue Apple may hold prices flat to protect its edge against premium Android rivals and absorb the hit instead. But with Apple’s own CEO already describing this memory squeeze as something he’s never seen in four decades in the industry, betting on a quiet, unchanged price tag this September looks like the riskier assumption.