Apple fans have plenty of reasons to look forward to the iPhone 15 launching later this year, but they may also need to prepare for a bigger financial hit. According to the latest rumors, the iPhone 15 Pro will see a price hike for the first time since the $999 phone was introduced in 2017.
Jeff Pu of Haitong International Securities, dropped the bombshell in a research note (via MacRumors) this week. The introduction of hardware upgrades such as solid-state buttons, USB-C, a titanium frame and a periscope lens, he says, will mean Apple will finally have to raise the prices of its iPhone Pro after six consecutive generations that started at $999, dating back to the iPhone X in 2017. Similarly, he thinks the iPhone 15 Pro Max or Ultra will have a higher starting price in the US than the $1,099 at which Apple stuck around for almost as long.
Pu may or may not be right – he has a mixed track record, including more recently the increasingly unlikely claim that Apple’s mixed reality headset will launch in the first quarter of this year – but he doesn’t. is not the first to make this prediction. Late last year, LeaksApplePro claimed that the larger iPhone would jump to $1,299 in 2023 and that it would be “almost impossible” to hit the $1,099 price for another year. Then in January, a similar claim was made by an unverified source on Weibo.
American iPhone fans will be disappointed if this new rambling rumor turns out to be accurate, but it’s worth mentioning that they’ve had it for the past few years. iPhone buyers in other countries have seen multiple price hikes since 2017, as igamesnews’s UK editors have often complained. Even taking inflation into account, iPhone prices in the UK have risen by 50% between 2007 and 2021, compared to just 12% in the US.
Then again, inflation may well be one of the justifications Apple uses (not unreasonably) for the likely price hike in the US, as well as supply chain difficulties and currency fluctuations. Also, more positively, the expected rebranding of the top model (at least in the Max size) as the iPhone 15 Ultra, to tie in with the more expensive Apple Watch model. US consumers might be slightly more willing to cross the $1,100 mark for an iPhone 15 Ultra than they would for a simple iPhone 15 Pro Max.
Again, price hike rumors pop up most years. We’ve heard a few times that the iPhone 14 handsets will go up $100 in the US, but they ended up costing the same amount on each tier as the Series 13 equivalent, where one existed. It’s also unclear if the upgrades Pu mentioned, specifically the titanium finish and periscope camera, will be exclusive to the iPhone 15 Pro Max/Ultra model. But a price hike would certainly not be a surprise.
For all the latest news and rumors about this year’s new phones, check out our regularly updated iPhone 15 superguide.
