New Delhi: Indian customers are in for a massive shock with the latest set of Apple iPhone 18 Pro, 18 Pro Max and first-ever Apple’s foldable iPhone Duo that has been released by Apple. The iPhone 18 Pro starts at Rs 1,64,900, while the iPhone 18 Pro Max begins at Rs 1,79,900. The iPhone Duo will cost even more, soon at the price of Rs 2,99,900. Some of the iPhones selling in India have some of the hottest prices ever.
The question is why such a huge increase? For the most part it’s simple: memory chips. Phones require chips of RAM and storage at which time, these chips are really costly to manufacture. Major tech firms including Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Meta are constructing massive AI data centers, and they’re requiring lots of memory chips to power them. This has diverted factory supply from the everyday gadgets such as tablets, laptops and even phones and moved prices up significantly.
Several reports has found that the price of the memory used in the iPhone Pro (256GB) has increased by almost 400 percent year-over-year. In total, it costs more to build an iPhone 18 Pro than it does to build an iPhone 17 Pro, by up to 38 percent. Apple’s outgoing CEO, Tim Cook, even declared that this memory shortage is a “hundred year flood” and has become all but impossible to avoid.
Hence, even last year’s Rs 89,900 iPhone 17 is priced at Rs 99,900. Apple didn’t even raise the prices on new phones, but also on the older ones being sold, such as the iPhone 16 and 17 series. It will help Apple offset some of its margins on its entire range of mobile devices, including the latest.
Experts believe Apple isn’t conveying the full pricing hike to customers. The company is reportedly taking the impact of the hit on itself, meaning that they are taking the price cut instead of passing it on to customers. Nonetheless, the memory market looks set to remain expensive until 2027, meaning further increases from beyond the smartphone market, including Android phones, could be in store.
