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iPhone 17 Prices Could Go Up as Soon as This Month

thelion7 said:
After giving it some thought and looking at other people's perspectives, I'm starting to think it has nothing to do with money in the short term.

Yes, I will stand by my comment that Apple has more money than god and that they could afford to absorb these costs indefinately.

But that's not the case.

Apple are in a position where if they don't rise prices soon, they will see their profits reduce (not good business)

Now with this in mind Apple have a choice (using 17 pro base model as an exmaple)

1. Apple could increase the iphones by lets say $100 to help address the price hike due to the shortages now. Making the new price $1200 and then release the 18 pro starting at that same price.

2. They could wait out the issue for 3 months until the 18 is announced and then add the increase there.

With this in mind, Tim is being very smart about this by potentially using his last months as CEO to be the voluntary scapegoat for what will be a very unpopular decision with customers.

Something Turnus shouldn't have to deal with during his first month as the new CEO.

Tim can make the decision and vanish into the board room, leaving Turnus the guy who didn't put the prices up be the new public face of the company.

The only way this theory doesn't work is if Apple bump the prices up now using the example of $1,100 to $1,200 then in September bump it up again to $1,300.

I don't think it's about the money, it's about making an inevitable decision and the best and most stratigic time.
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"It has nothing to do with money" but "they will see their profits reduce". So which is it?

It's greed. Point blank.
 
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Yeah if Apple was gonna pull a Nintendo here they would have already done so. No way in hell they wait until a couple months before the next model launches to jack up the prices, as that would absolutely stall out sales. If you figure the new models are going to cost the same after the price bump, why buy now for a soon to be inferior product?
 
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DelayedGratificationGene said:
Every time a disruption happens to Apple products Apple brings in house. Intel with processors reliability and speed, Qualcomm with pricing of modems etc…now memory pricing is the disruption. Tim says they aren’t but you can bet the ranch they are.
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I think Turnus being a hardware guy leans toward this happening even more so
 
thelion7 said:
Seems silly.

Apple should just reserve all price hikes for the next gens instead making customers pay more for a device that is getting more obsolete every day.

New generation, new price.
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The iPhone 18 and iPhone 18 Air aren't coming until next Spring, so they can't wait to bump the prices. Also, bumping them now avoids the shock of the increased price spoiling the iPhone 18 Pro/Fold reveal
magamo said:
Where is the proverbial AI productivity boost? I see semiconductor inflation everywhere as well as lots of AI slop and layoffs/hiring freeze. But I'm yet to see society-changing benefits.
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It's happening in companies who are using AI to automate many functions and linking them together. It's likely the benefits will be retained by the company and its shareholders/owners. I kind of doubt society will see any benefits over the next few years...
JosephAW said:
It’s hard to believe but someday there will be such a glut of memory storage on the market that the whole thing will collapse. Think Apple will pass that along to us? Probably not. 😵
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They will do. A bump of the iPhone Pro base to $1400 to maintain profits will likely collapse sales by 20-30% (at least) and if Apple every wants to recover sales numbers, they will have to drop the prices.
 
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It does make sense to raise the price of the 17 so that the 18 doesn't get lumped with the price hike stigma
 
Andy_2341 said:
Pretty much. The only useful thing I got from AI was headaches from arguing with a hallucinating chatbot and an increased desire to distance from tech and make sure to think for myself.
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I have an MA in comp engineering although my main field is I/O psych and have been a tech enthusiast for most of my life. Now, I can’t stand it. I used to love learning the latest tech and helping friends, family, even strangers with their devices as it did make lives better. I remember helping a hearing impaired woman with her iPhone 6 years ago while waiting at an Apple Store for a genius appointment and after an hour showing her what she can do with her hearing aids and iOS accessibility she gave me a hug and couldn’t be more thankful. That is how tech should be.

No shade, but as a forty something I see younger generations with Tik Tok rot and influenced by social media disinformation and podcast and tech bros buying into the bitcoin and AI hype and it pains me. Not to generalize, but most do not understand the actual implications of it all.

Any new advancements in any field should always be fully evaluated before mass deployment. We should have been asking whether we should instead of can and I fear it’s too late to put the AI genie back in the bottle.
 
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joeblow7777 said:
Same thing is happening with game consoles.
I never imagined a reality where the cheapest time to buy a new device would be as soon as it launches because prices would increase with time.
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And those same devices are worth less for trade in values unless you sell online but even then consumers don’t have the disposable income anymore. That is insane to me.
 
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Johnny907 said:
Yeah if Apple was gonna pull a Nintendo here they would have already done so. No way in hell they wait until a couple months before the next model launches to jack up the prices, as that would absolutely stall out sales. If you figure the new models are going to cost the same after the price bump, why buy now for a soon to be inferior product?
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My reason is because the regular 18 will not be here until next Spring. And who knows about availability with memory by then, along with huge price increases that will have arrived for sure.

Plus iOS 27 is looking more like a cleaned up version of 26 so not too concerned about older technology handling new software. And interest in AI use on the iPhone through Siri, at least from my kiddos point of view, is no big deal.
 
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It will be interesting to see what unfolds on these AI centers over the next five years. I'm suspecting that they will soon enough develop new, much more AI optimized hardware to replace GPUs. When that happens they will just have to reimplement these data centers. It's tough doing massive build outs when things are changing so fast. Hopefully any such changes will also make things much more efficient so AI doesn't hog so much electricity and water.
 
JohnC1959 said:
It will be interesting to see what unfolds on these AI centers over the next five years. I'm suspecting that they will soon enough develop new, much more AI optimized hardware to replace GPUs. When that happens they will just have to reimplement these data centers. It's tough doing massive build outs when things are changing so fast. Hopefully any such changes will also make things much more efficient so AI doesn't hog so much electricity and water.
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Or, and stay with me, maybe we shouldn’t be doing any of this. All it’s doing is enriching corporations with price gauging and mass layoffs as I posted above. The average person’s lives aren’t changing for the better. None of it is improving our day to day lives, just enriching the technocrat billionaires.
 
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thelion7 said:
Seems silly.

Apple should just reserve all price hikes for the next gens instead making customers pay more for a device that is getting more obsolete every day.

New generation, new price.
Click to expand...
Like almost everything tech, it's obsolete when you buy it.
 
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CDPlayer said:
I have an MA in comp engineering although my main field is I/O psych and have been a tech enthusiast for most of my life. Now, I can’t stand it. I used to love learning the latest tech and helping friends, family, even strangers with their devices as it did make lives better. I remember helping a hearing impaired woman with her iPhone 6 years ago while waiting at an Apple Store for a genius appointment and after an hour showing her what she can do with her hearing aids and iOS accessibility she gave me a hug and couldn’t be more thankful. That is how tech should be.

No shade, but as a forty something I see younger generations with Tik Tok rot and influenced by social media disinformation and podcast and tech bros buying into the bitcoin and AI hype and it pains me. Not to generalize, but most do not understand the actual implications of it all.

Any new advancements in any field should always be fully evaluated before mass deployment. We should have been asking whether we should instead of can and I fear it’s too late to put the AI genie back in the bottle.
Click to expand...
You're right that a lot of my peers do not understand the implications of AI. General disinformation about tech as a whole from various online sources doesn't help either. Many don't even understand more basic parts of their devices and have no clue their devices are more capable than they use them for. There's biased opinions about basically everything, and unlike the woman you helped they typically aren't willing to spend the time to learn such things in general. There are of course many exceptions but they aren't the majority. I used to love helping my family and friends with tech too but now it has just become a mess. My older family members don't want, need, or like the AI stuff. My friends will complain or spread the disinformation but not fix the complaint and argue about the truth. It's hard to change cause it's everywhere now like you said. I'm just hoping that eventually either people will realize or the market of AI will crash and burn.
 
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unkl bob said:
Hmmm. 15" M4 MBA 16Gb and 512Gb = $1399.
15" M5 MBA 16Gb and 512 Gb = $1299.
Apple Store prices...
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M5 MBA was announced on March 11, 2026. Upgrade cost for RAM and SSD happened around January 2025 before the existence of the M5 MBA. I complained to Apple and they said it was a mistake on website but later other macrumors members confirmed the price increase.
 
1rottenapple said:
All i know is my chicken grom the grocery store was $8, then $9, now $11. Whey Protein went from $60, to $85 all in a years time. Its kinda rediculous at this point, I am not even worried about consumer tech like really who cares but the day to day stuff is just getting too much.
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Exactly and we know they won’t lower the prices. Average household income hasn’t kept pace with inflation for many years and the minimum wage has stayed the same. The markets are untenable as capitalism only works when people have enough disposable income and everyone is cutting back across the board.

Apple positioned itself as a luxury brand under Cook, this much was apparent when Angela Ahrendts was brought on as retail lead from Burberry (and she is brilliant, kind, and talented - I’ve had the pleasure in knowing her years ago, sadly she simply wasn’t the right fit for the cutthroat Silicon Valley industry). Cook understands Apple products will be the first to take a hit and that is already happening as the average consumer is deciding between basic needs and the latest Apple or tech gear.

I also suspect (really know) that Apple anticipated AI would eventually die down and focused mostly on small scale investments after numerous large scale projects were cancelled - they didn’t want to invest in what was projected to be a dead end. Most did not anticipate the recent sociopolitical changes that have benefited billionaires and corporations. There’s a reason they’re all close with the recent US administration as they’ve gutted regulations and oversight, even Cook knows where his bread is buttered. The AI boom is truly the result of certain political parties shaping economic policies and everyone is cashing in while we all foot the bill. Now it’s too big to fail.
 
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I ordered a couple 17 Pro max phones from T-mobile last week as they gave us $1100 trade in credit each for our current phones.

All the carriers have a "17 Pro on us" deal going on to likely get rid of current inventory.

If Apple raised prices now on the 17s, that might put a ding in the carrier deals going on.
 
The best solution is to go back to the drawing board and write unbloated software like when the whole windows XP needed 1.5GB storage and a recommended 128 MEGABYTES of RAM. Now we have 0.5GB web browser tab.

Steves Padawan said:
2020 - covid - inflation, economical crysis, rise of services and subscriptions
2021 - covid - inflation, fall of sales, rise of gaming and services
2022 - war in ukraine - energetical crysis and inflation
2023 - inflation, economical growth
2024 - inflation from january to august
2025 - inflation whole year, work crysis, fall of sales everywhere
2026 - inflation, ram and ai crysis, economical crysis, fall of sales, work crysis, gaming become luxury, electronics price hikes, war in Iran... now Apple will be more expensive
Click to expand...

All doom and gloom and price hikes due to rise in expenses , but the whole Nasdaq doubled in market cap from 2020 to 2026 somehow.
 
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