The iPhone 17 Pro May Get Both a Price Hike and a Price Cut
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Although it’s unlikely anybody outside of Apple’s upper echelons knows how the company will price its iPhone 17 lineup this year, the consensus among the usual analysts and pundits is that we’re likely in for some kind of price increase. After all, inflation and tariffs make a perfect economic storm that may be hard for even a multi-trillion-dollar company like Apple to weather.
With Apple expected to hold its September iPhone event in less than four weeks, several sources point to the most likely scenario being a “pseudo” price increase for the iPhone 17 Pro that could follow the trend set by its larger ancestor two years ago. However, Apple could also throw in an extra twist that might technically mean the price decreases slightly this year.
If you were in the market for an iPhone 15 Pro Max in 2023, you may recall that Apple snuck the entry-level price of its plus-sized flagship up by $100 by kicking the table out from under it. Gigabyte for gigabyte, the 2023 iPhone Pro Max wasn’t any more expensive than the 2022 iPhone 14 Pro Max, but you had to pay more to get on board as Apple eliminated the more affordable 128 GB model.
Specifically, the iPhone 14 Pro Max, like all of its predecessors since the 2018 iPhone XS Max, had a starting price of $1,099 — $100 more than its smaller $999 sibling. In 2018–19, that was for a 64 GB model. Apple upped its base storage to 128 GB in the iPhone 12 Pro lineup, but throughout that entire era, the second tier was always 256 GB; there were no 128 GB versions of the iPhone XS or iPhone 11 Pro.
While some believed that Apple was due to give its Pro iPhones another base storage bump by 2023, it chose instead to drop the 128 GB iPhone 15 Pro Max from the lineup, forcing users who wanted the largest Pro model to pay $100 more to enter at the 256 GB level. Meanwhile, the standard iPhone 15 Pro storage tiers remained unchanged, representing the first time in iPhone history that two sizes of the same iPhone model have had different storage options.
Apple maintained that pricing model with the iPhone 16 Pro lineup last year, with the iPhone 16 Pro starting at $999 for a 128 GB model and the iPhone 16 Pro Max skipping the lower capacity and pushing users instead to go for the 256 GB version at $1,199. It was a sneaky way to increase prices without technically increasing prices, as the value proposition of the new iPhones never changed.
Now, it appears Apple might try a similar trick with this year’s iPhone 17 Pro. We’ve already heard reports that Apple will bump the storage to 256 GB, but it remains an open question what that will do to the pricing.
Apple has increased its base iPhone storage capacity five times since the original model in 2007 (or six times if you count the very short-lived 4 GB iPhone, which was on the market for only 68 days). The iPhone 5 raised the bar to 16 GB from the original 8 GB in 2012.
Other than the iPhone 5c, which still started at 8 GB, the baseline remained at 16 GB until 2016, when the iPhone 7 became the only mainstream release to start at 32 GB. A year later, Apple set the new standard to 64 GB, where it remained until the iPhone 12 Pro started at 128 GB. The non-Pro iPhone 13 followed suit a year later.
- 2007–2011: 8 GB
- 2012–2015: 16 GB
- 2016: 32 GB
- 2017–2019: 64 GB
- 2020–2024: 128 GB.
Looking at those numbers, one could argue that we’re well overdue for another base storage bump without a corresponding price increase. It’s certainly possible Apple could do that — again, nobody but Apple knows what its prices will be, so much of what we’re hearing is speculation with only a small amount of solid information behind it, at best.
Still, another possibility that some of the pundits are hanging their hats on is that Apple will split the difference. More than one report has suggested the company is looking at a $50 price increase for most models, including the iPhone 17 Pro, although opinions are divided on whether the base iPhone 17 will increase in price.
This means that the iPhone 17 Pro would jump to $1,049. If we combine that with the reports that the iPhone 17 Pro will jump to 256 GB of storage, that would mean that it’s actually selling for less than its predecessor, gig-for-gig. The 256 GB iPhone 16 Pro costs $1,099 today, so a $1,049 iPhone 17 Pro in the same capacity would represent a nearly unprecedented price drop for a new iPhone. At the same time, it also raises the price of an iPhone 17 Pro by forcing some folks to pay for more storage than they might otherwise need.
This is all still best taken with a sizeable chunk of salt. While it’s understandable that some leakers could have inside info on a higher storage capacity based on what’s happening in the supply chain, Apple holds pricing information very close to the vest, and sometimes doesn’t even finalize those decisions until the eleventh hour.
We’re still skeptical about any price increase for the iPhone 17 Pro, as Apple has long stuck to the $999 mark, a sweet spot for the standard iPhone Pro models. Apple likes it so much that it’s been the entry-level Pro price since the iPhone X showed up in 2017. Crossing that $1,000 barrier would be a big deal, but this could be the year that Apple is forced to bite that bullet.
[The information provided in this article has NOT been confirmed by Apple and may be speculation. Provided details may not be factual. Take all rumors, tech or otherwise, with a grain of salt.]
