Apple has announced a price increase for its existing iPhone models, effective immediately, coinciding with the unveiling of the new iPhone 18 and the company’s first foldable iPhone, the iPhone Duo. Starting prices for older models on Apple’s online store have risen by $100, with the iPhone 16 now at $799, the iPhone 17e at $699, the iPhone 17 at $899, and the iPhone Air at $1,099. The price hikes are even more pronounced in certain international markets, such as India, where prices have reportedly increased by approximately 20.5%. Additionally, Apple has discontinued the iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max.

This pricing strategy represents a departure from Apple’s traditional approach, where older iPhone models typically become more affordable upon the release of new generations. The decision to raise prices is attributed to several factors, including a global shortage of memory and storage chips driven by heightened demand from AI companies and cloud providers. Former Apple CEO Tim Cook previously acknowledged in a June interview with The Wall Street Journal that rising component costs might necessitate a reevaluation of Apple’s pricing strategy, as the company could no longer fully absorb the increasing expenses associated with memory and storage chips. The price increases follow similar adjustments made to Apple’s Mac and iPad lineups about a week after Cook’s comments. Other potential motivations for the iPhone price hikes include maintaining competitiveness with rivals like Samsung and Google, as well as the perceived mitigating effect of Apple’s Upgrade program, which enables customers to spread the cost of an iPhone through manageable monthly payments. Source

This is a summary. Read the original at techcrunch.com.