The iPhone has gotten more expensive before. But a potential $1,299 starting price for the iPhone 18 Pro would represent something different: not a premium upsell, but a cost-driven increase forced by a global memory chip shortage that Apple can no longer absorb.
In a Wall Street Journal interview published June 17, Apple CEO Tim Cook said price hikes across Apple’s product lineup are “unavoidable” as memory chip costs surge. The culprit is AI, which has hoovered up manufacturing capacity for high-bandwidth memory used in data centers, leaving consumer electronics fighting over what’s left.
The numbers behind the squeeze
According to TechInsights analyst Mike Howard, the cost of 12GB LPDDR5X DRAM, the type of memory used in flagship smartphones, has jumped from $39 to $145. That’s a 272% increase.
NAND flash storage hasn’t fared much better. The price for 256GB NAND has climbed from $13 to $51, a 292% surge. These aren’t niche components. They’re in every iPhone, iPad, and Mac that Apple ships.
