Apple’s Mac and iPad price hikes have me worried about the iPhone 18 Pro

Apple might not have hiked the price of the iPhone 17 range this week, but the same likely won’t be true for the iPhone 18 Pro later this year. 

Earlier this week, the multi-billion-dollar company jacked up prices on everything from budget iPads to workstation‑class Macs, blaming what it calls an “extraordinary surge” in the cost of memory and storage used in AI data centres.

But while many of Apple’s most popular products now cost more – and in some places, a lot more – there was one product line that remained untouched. The iPhone. Head over to the Apple Store and you’ll see the same £/$799 starting price for the iPhone 17 as last week. 

Now, while you might assume that Apple is just doing everybody a solid by keeping its iPhone more attainable, I don’t think that’s actually the case – especially when the rumoured iPhone 18 Pro and foldable iPhone drop in a few months’ time.  

A lot of Apple products just got more expensive

Apple isn’t a company that’s usually known for cheap, affordable tech – but that didn’t stop it from hiking prices across many of its products this week. 

The company says it has “never seen a component price increase this much, this quickly” and claims it’s “working tirelessly to find solutions”, but for consumers, it essentially boils down to paying more for the same kit.

On the Mac side, the budget-friendly Mac Mini and MacBook Neo are both up by £/$100, now at £/$799 and £/$699 respectively, while the MacBook Air has jumped by £/$200 to £/$1,299. 

Higher up the range, the MacBook Pro has climbed from £/$1,699 to £/$1,999, and the Mac Studio with M4 Max is up £/$500 to £/$2,499. The wildest jump is reserved for the M3 Ultra Mac Studio, which now costs a whopping £/$5,299, a £/$1,300 leap from its previous £/$3,999 RRP.

It’s not just Macs, either. The 11-inch iPad Air is now £/$749 (up £/$150), the 11-inch iPad Pro has risen by £/$200 to £/$1,199, and the top-end 13-inch iPad Pro now comes in at £/$1,499. Even the HomePod mini hasn’t escaped, climbing by £/$30 to £/$129 – a 30% increase on what was once one of Apple’s more affordable gadgets.

But the iPhones are, oddly, untouched

Macs, iPads and even the humble HomePod mini all got price rises – but there was one very popular product line that was left, rather oddly, untouched. The iPhone collection.

All models of iPhone, from the budget-focused iPhone 17e to top-end models like the iPhone 17 Pro Max and iPhone Air, still cost the exact same as they did this time last week. I mean, they’re still expensive, but not 20% more expensive. 

That might come as a welcome relief to iPhone fans planning to upgrade to the latest iPhone in the near future – but if you have plans to get yourself a shiny new iPhone, I’d recommend grabbing one sooner rather than later. 

Simply put; there’s no way that Apple can eat the increased costs of components like RAM and storage vital to the iPhone experience. So why didn’t Apple boost iPhone prices at the same time? 

Unlike Macs and iPads that tend to hold value for years on end and remain tempting options in the face of upgraded models, the iPhone is certainly a more seasonal device. We get a new one every year, like clockwork, with notable upgrades rather than just a simple chip upgrade like most other Apple products get. 

And with the iPhone 18 Pro and possibly even the foldable iPhone expected to debut in just a few months, I suspect that raising prices on the iPhone 17 range would’ve likely discouraged users from buying what will, in a few months, be an outdated model, leaving Apple with plenty of stock to shift. 

This way, at least, the iPhone 17 range looks like it’s offering great value for money while pretty much every other Apple product has jumped in price.

That likely won’t be the case in September

In my mind, there’s very little chance that the iPhone 18 Pro will cost the same as last year’s iPhone 17 Pro.

Yes, the fact that Apple has hiked prices across much of its hardware range already suggests the same is coming for the new iPhones later this year – but look at the rest of the smartphone industry and it’s much the same story. 

Samsung’s Galaxy S26 range is a great example of this. The entry-level S25 would’ve set you back £799/$799, but this year’s Galaxy S26 has jumped to £879/$899, while the Galaxy S26 Plus also saw a £/$100 price hike. 

Samsung tried to offset the price increase by ditching the previous 128GB model in favour of a 256GB base model, but it’s clear that Samsung has had to do some wrangling to make the numbers work.

The other option is to try to leave the base-level model untouched – or as close to last year’s RRP as possible – and instead bump up the higher storage tiers. That’s what Samsung did with this year’s Galaxy A57; the base 256GB model is £479/$549, which is actually £20 cheaper than its predecessor in the UK, but the model with 512GB of storage costs an almost unbelievable £649/$609.

Make no mistake; the latter is very much considered premium smartphone territory. Something that the A57, well… isn’t.

Nothing CEO Carl Pei has also warned consumers about price hikes across the board when it comes to smartphone tech, and rumours suggest that Google’s upcoming Pixel 11 range could face similar issues when it debuts in the coming months. 

With all that in mind, and Apple openly admitting that component costs are an “unprecedented challenge”, it seems almost impossible that Apple could offer the iPhone 18 Pro at the same £/$1099 price point as last year – especially if the rumoured boost to 12GB of RAM is true. That RAM is like gold dust right now. 

The question is, will Apple try to offset the base-level prices by increasing higher storage options, or will we see a flat increase across all models of Apple’s upcoming Pro-level iPhone? We’ll have to wait and see, I suppose. 

And don’t even get me started on how all this could push up the price of the no-doubt already-expensive foldable iPhone Ultra. I think I might need to sell a kidney for that one at this point.