Inflation-weary Americans, brace yourselves.
Apple’s new iPhone 18 models expected to be announced next week may cost at least $100 more than last year’s versions and a price bump is coming for some older models, too, according to analyst estimates.
The company also may not update its less-expensive iPhones this year and focus on the fanciest models, including a new folding iPhone with an anticipated sticker price of $2,000 or more.
Apple is just the latest smartphone company releasing devices with higher prices and in some cases worse technical capabilities, contributing to Americans’ affordability woes and bucking the pattern of consumer electronics getting better and cheaper over time.
The culprit for this new era of smartphone inflation is the artificial intelligence boom and tech giants’ huge spending on new data centers, which is cascading into higher costs for smartphone components. That’s making the computers in everyone’s pockets a visible manifestation of AI’s unintended consequences, including in pushing up the cost of living.
No matter what smartphone you might buy new or used in the next few years, it’s likely to cost more. Wayne Lam, an analyst at TechInsights who specializes in consumer electronic costs, said that if you’re planning to buy a smartphone in the next year or so, consider doing so before the price goes up. Maybe buy right this minute.
“Go and do it,” Lam said. “It’s going up and unlikely to come down.”
Smartphone prices have largely been pushed higher by the quadrupling of costs in the past year for a type of computer chip that makes it feel zippy when you bounce between apps or play an intensive video game.
Those once predictably dull memory chips are now in hot demand from the free-spending technology companies rushing to erect AI-calculating data centers. Their chip spending sprees are sparking shortages and spiraling prices of computer chips that power many gadgets.
Manufacturers of laptops, video game consoles, digital assistant speakers, streaming TV boxes, internet-connected doorbells and e-readers have been marking up prices — multiple times for Microsoft’s Xbox. The companies have largely blamed AI-related “chipflation,” as the investment bank Morgan Stanley calls it.
Early this year, Apple dropped hints that it might raise device prices as it struggled with the computer chip upheavals. In June, the company followed through by increasing prices by up to $500 on some Macs, iPads and HomePod speakers.
Tim Cook, who stepped aside as Apple’s CEO earlier this week, said in July that the spiraling cost of memory chips was “a 100-year flood.”
Memory price hikes have finally started hitting Apple. Today, they raised some base prices: Macbook Neo: $599 -> $699 Macbook Air: $1099 -> $1299 Macbook Pro: $1699 -> $1999 Mac Studio: $1999 -> $2499 iPad Air $599 – $749 iPad Pro: $999 -> $1199
— Marques Brownlee (@MKBHD) June 25, 2026
Analysts expected that iPhones would be next in line for price increases.
Nabila Popal, senior research director at market research firm IDC, expects Apple on Wednesday to update its higher-end Pro and Pro Max iPhones with a $200 markup over the 2025 versions. Other industry analysts expect the price to increase by $100.
Popal and other analysts also expect prices to stay the same, or go up by $100, for iPhone models from 2025 and prior years. That’s a departure from the norm of older iPhones still sold by Apple or phone carriers dropping when new devices come out.
“That won’t help the industry in terms of consumer backlash,” Popal said.
And unlike prior years, according to analysts and reporting by Bloomberg News, Apple this year may not release a new basic iPhone model, which has had a $799 starting price.
Anyone buying a new iPhone this holiday season would be forced to choose among three higher-priced iPhone 18 models, including a new luxury folding iPhone. When the basic iPhone 18 model does appear early next year, according to analyst forecasts, it’s also expected to get a $100 price bump.
Apple did not respond to a request for comment.
Analysts say that a $100 increase won’t fully cover Apple’s higher costs for computer chips and other parts. That means the company may see a decline in its average $400 profit on each $1,000 of devices and accessories that it sells, before accounting for its operational costs, according to financial disclosures.
Most Americans don’t swallow Apple’s smartphone prices in a single bite. They instead buy devices from mobile phone carriers that offer promotions and spread out new smartphone costs across dozens of monthly bills.
AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon executives have told investors that they won’t sweeten promotional discounts to cover the expected higher iPhone prices. Still, a $1,300 iPhone 18 Pro works out to about $36 in monthly bills over three years, a few dollars more than the installment cost of the 2025 model.
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AT&T chief executive John Stankey recently predicted that Americans will start buying fewer phones. “When prices go up, demand goes down,” he said.
And there is anecdotal evidence that Americans battered by five years of abnormally climbing prices may be balking at higher-priced gadgets.
Chad Johansen, who runs five CPR Cell Phone Repair stores in New Hampshire and Massachusetts, said more customers are choosing to fix older video game systems and smartphones that they might have replaced with new devices in prior years.
“We’re hearing a lot more, ‘I’ll just keep what I have,’” Johansen said in an email. “Good for my business, but it’s a real shift.”
Jake Freudinger, who paid about $4,000 for a high-end MacBook Pro in April, said they noticed the cost for a comparable model is now $800 to $900 more. At the higher price, “that would have been a hell no,” said Freudinger, who helps run a mental health media organization.
Americans are typically holding onto smartphones for four or more years, research shows, but it may be hard to wait out Apple’s price-hiking spree.
Some industry executives have said that memory chip prices will remain high through 2030, which could keep smartphone prices elevated for years. Or possibly forever.
Once smartphone prices go up, it’s unlikely that companies will cut them, predicted Cliff Maldonado, principal analyst at the mobile analytics firm BayStreet Research. He also expects Apple to bump up iPhone prices again next year.
“We’re never going down,” Maldonado said. “We’re only going up.”
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