Published June 18th, 2026 - 09:25 GMT
ALBAWABA - At the WWDC26 keynote last week, it was rumored that the price of the highly anticipated iPhone 18 will remain the same as previous models at $799. Tim Cook, Apple's CEO, dashed these hopes and told us to expect price increases on new models due to a memory chip shortage.The iPhone 18, set to be revealed in September of this year, will be the most AI-integrated phone yet; built fully on an AI framework- consequently, as AI needs RAM to operate and as RAM prices went through the roof, Apple's CEO tempered expectations of the price remaining the same as last year's model, saying that the new iPhone will probably be pricier.Unfortunately, price increases are unavoidable. We’re doing our best to mitigate the huge increases that are being passed to us, and we’ve been trying to shield our customers from the increases, but the situation has become unsustainable. - Tim Cook, Apple CEO, June 2026To maintain current profit margins for new iPhones, Apple will have to raise the price by $270, according to TechInsights. High demand for AI has made memory and chip prices skyrocket through the roof, with prices going up 200% - 500% in 2025.The iPhone 18 Pro may start at $1,299 according to a new rumor.Apple is considering this $200 price increase over the iPhone 17 Pro in order to protect their margins against elevated memory and storage costs. pic.twitter.com/5uBHMziuHK— AppleTrack (@appltrack) June 18, 2026 There’s less supply at a time when consumers want devices and the memory guys are passing along huge price increases. We definitely need memory pricing and supply to return to reasonable levels for consumer products. That’s the bottom line. - Tim Cook, Apple CEO, June 2026Last year's model, the iPhone 17 Pro, started at $1,099 for 256GB of storage and 12GB of RAM; these components could cost four times more by the fall of this year, according to TechInsights. While Apple paid $39 for the 12GB of RAM in the 17 Pro, it could be paying up to $145 for it for the iPhone 18 Pro. The storage price is projected to increase from $13 to $51 for the base model.
