The iPhone 18 Pro Might Start at $1,399, and Even the Optimists Are Giving Up

Two months ago the case for staying calm went like this: yes, memory prices have gone insane, but Apple runs the best supply chain on earth and has a long history of quietly eating costs to protect a price point. Analyst Jeff Pu of GF Securities was making exactly that argument in May, saying Apple could still price the iPhone 18 Pro aggressively. This week he changed his mind.

In a new research note, Pu now expects the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max to land $250 to $300 above their predecessors. That works out to roughly $1,349 to $1,399 for the iPhone 18 Pro and $1,449 to $1,499 for the Pro Max. The iPhone 17 Pro starts at $1,099 today. The 17 Pro Max starts at $1,199. Do that math on a Pro Max with any storage upgrade at all and you're staring at a phone that costs more than a decent laptop.

Where all that money is actually going

Pu points at three line items: the new 2nm A20 Pro chip, LPDDR5X memory, and NAND storage. The memory piece is the ugly one. Research firm TechInsights, cited earlier this summer by The Wall Street Journal, estimated Apple paid around $39 for the DRAM in an iPhone 17 Pro and could pay something closer to $145 for the same job in the iPhone 18 Pro. The 256GB of flash that cost about $13 could run roughly $51.

That's over $140 of new cost on two components that you will never see, think about, or brag to anyone about. It exists because AI data centers are buying memory faster than anyone can make it, and phones are losing that fight.

Apple already ran this play once this year

In June, Apple raised prices across the Mac and iPad lines, plus the Apple TV, HomePod, HomePod mini, and Vision Pro. The increases ran from $30 on the HomePod mini up to $1,300 on a maxed-out Mac Studio. The iPhone, Apple Watch, and AirPods were left alone.

At the time that looked like Apple protecting its most visible product. It's starting to look more like Apple buying time until September, when the next iPhone gives it a natural moment to reset expectations. Tim Cook told the Journal the company was still working through which devices would move. That is not the answer of a company planning to hold the line.

The part that should make Apple nervous

Pu downgraded AAPL from buy to hold on the back of this, citing demand uncertainty. That's the real question here, and it's a fair one. The iPhone 18 Pro is not expected to bring a sweeping redesign, since that's reportedly being saved for next year's 20th anniversary models. What you're getting is a faster chip, a better camera system, and four new colors.

Asking someone to pay $300 more for a phone that looks like the one they already own is a genuinely difficult sell, no matter how good the silicon is. Apple's own leasing program, launched last week with Klarna, feels less like a coincidence and more like a hedge.

None of this is confirmed. Analyst notes are educated guesses, and Pu himself was predicting flat pricing three months ago. But when the person arguing for the optimistic case abandons it, that's worth noticing. If you were planning to upgrade this fall, start budgeting now, and take a hard look at whether the standard iPhone 18 does everything you actually need.