Apple reportedly placed orders for iPhone 18 components amid “soft demand” for the latest generation smartphones that were only released last month.
Nikkei Asia reports (via Yahoo Finance) that Apple has cut orders by up to 20% for this month following lower-than-expected sales so far. The iPhone 18 Pro range isn’t the biggest update ever and the yet-to-be-released iPhone Duo is arguably the more exciting start to this product cycle, but the once-a-year updates usually generate great buzz out of the gate.
The main line iPhone Pro models have changed so much in the past few years, but what has changed are the starting prices. Apple has increased the cost of the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max this year, to account for the cost of components such as RAM and storage.
The lowest price for an iPhone 18 Pro is now $1,199 / £1,119. That’s $100/£100 up on last year’s iPhone 18 Pro prices. It’s $200/£200 more than the starting price for the iPhone 16 Pro, which had the 128GB storage options cut from the last two generations.
With the rise of other gadgets, streaming services, groceries, energy, and an AI-related employment crisis, it’s not really a surprise that people aren’t rushing to get a new iPhone that they’d like but don’t really need right now.
Tech companies that collect tens of billions in profits per quarter must realize that there is a limit to our love for the devices they make. Pushing prices up so as not to eat into their own limitless wealth has limits.
Apple stock is down about 1% at the time of writing.
