TrendForce says memory now makes up 34% of the iPhone 18 Pro's component cost, up from 10% a year ago. Buyers should expect price rises of $100 to $300 over the previous generation iphones.
Apple raised prices on Mac, iPad, Apple TV, HomePod and Vision Pro in June 2026, with the usual suspect of RAMageddon being the core issue. At the time it held iPhone pricing steady, but that could soon change. With the new iPhone 18 Pro due to be launched next month (the base spec model will follow next year, according to reports), consumers probably need to brace themselves for some steep increases.
Taiwanese semiconductor research firm TrendForce has published a report estimating that the bill of materials for a 256GB iPhone 18 Pro is running roughly 38% above the equivalent iPhone 17 Pro.
The driver is almost entirely memory costs. A year ago, memory made up about 10% of an iPhone's component cost. In TrendForce's Q3 2026 estimate, that's risen to around 34%. It’s going to get worse too. In line with other analyst reports that we’re nowhere near the peak of all this yet, the firm projects those costs will pass 40% in the first half of 2027.
It could impressively enough have been even worse, but prices for other components haven’t risen anywhere near as much. While memory prices generally have climbed five- to sevenfold since the start of 2025, panel and application processor costs, historically the two biggest line items in a phone's bill of materials, have actually shrunk.
The iPhone 18 Pro will be anything from $100 to $300 more expensive than the iPhone 17 Pro.
Apple’s got a history of absorbing some costs and has the famously generous margins to be available to do so, especially if it’s trying to protect volume sales numbers. But those memory cost rises are extreme, and it is estimated that the iPhone 18 Pro will be anything from $100 to $300 more expensive than the $1099 price of the iPhone 17 Pro when it launched last year.
What’s more, it is strongly suggested that the iPhone 17 will rise in price from its current $799 starting point at the same time the new phone is introduced.
As for the iPhone 18, when that follows in six months’ time, it is possible that Apple will have had more time to basically cut costs elsewhere to allow for the increased memory costs. That could mean everything from a cheaper, dimmer screen, to a lower-spec A20 chip with fewer GPU cores, and more components shared with the entry-level 18e, also expected at the same time. Some reports suggest the iPhone 18 will need 12 GB RAM to run iOS 27's new Siri AI voice customisation and dictation features, though analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has claimed Apple will hold it at 9 GB, which would leave those features unsupported.
Given the fact that Apple is betting a lot on the introduction of Siri AI, that would be surprising. But one thing the current memory situation teaches us is that such surprises are very much becoming the new normal.