As was rumored for months, Apple's iPhone 18 Pro launch on September 9 brought price hikes across almost every iPhone in its lineup, not just the new models. The iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max now start at $1,199 and $1,299, a $100 jump over the iPhone 17 Pro pair, both of which have been discontinued. Apple also raised prices by $100 across the board on the phones it kept around.

The iPhone 16 now starts at $799, the iPhone 17e at $699, the iPhone 17 at $899, and the iPhone Air at $1,099. None of these older models got any hardware changes to justify the bump. The timing of these price hikes aligns with what's become an industry-wide DRAM shortage, driven largely by AI data center demand soaking up memory supply.

Apple CEO Tim Cook has previously compared the situation to a "hundred-year flood," and said the company can no longer absorb rising memory and storage costs like before. This mirrors what's already played out across the PC space, where DRAM and SSD price hikes have been hitting system builders and OEMs for months. It looks like Apple, despite its scale and negotiating leverage, isn't immune to the same memory price pressure squeezing the rest of the industry.