Apple has turned one of its most familiar iPhone launch rituals on its head in India. Instead of cutting prices of older models to make room for the new generation, the company has made several of them substantially more expensive.
The price increases, announced immediately after the launch of the iPhone 18 Pro series and Apple’s first foldable iPhone Duo, mean consumers looking for an older, more affordable iPhone will now have to pay considerably more. The increase is as high as 25% on some models.
It is a significant departure from Apple’s usual playbook. Every new iPhone launch typically creates a new price ladder — with the latest models at the top and older generations becoming progressively more accessible. That ladder has helped Apple widen its customer base in India without compromising its premium positioning.
This time, the company has chosen a different route, reflecting the cost pressures that have been building across the smartphone industry.
“Apple having stronger control over their prices allowed them to hedge the impact of chip shortages for the longest time. It is the last company to raise prices,” Upasana Joshi, senior research manager, IDC said. Other smartphone makers, she said, have been raising prices of both new and existing devices for the past seven-eight months.
Apple had already raised prices of Macs, iPads, Apple TV and HomePod products in India in June, but left iPhones untouched. At the time, analysts had expected the iPhone to eventually follow, as rising memory and chip costs increased pressure on manufacturers.
The bigger question now is what the move does to Apple’s growth in India.
The models taking the biggest hit are also among those that provided a relatively lower entry point to the iPhone ecosystem. The iPhone 17 256GB, for instance, has gone from Rs 82,900 to Rs 99,900, while the iPhone 17e has risen from Rs 64,900 to Rs 79,900. The iPhone 16 128GB now costs Rs 89,900, compared with Rs 79,900 earlier.
The iPhone Air has seen an even steeper increase. Its 256GB version is now priced at Rs 1,49,900, Rs 30,000 more than before.
That could make the lower end of Apple’s portfolio considerably harder to sell, particularly in a market such as India where price remains important even within the premium smartphone segment.
“We have already projected a single-digit decline in volumes earlier, and that is expected to go down further with the price hikes,” Joshi said.
The equation could be different at the top end. Apple’s customers buying its Pro and other premium models are generally less sensitive to price, meaning the company may be able to absorb higher prices without a proportionate hit to demand.
“There will be some impact in volumes. But as we have seen in the past with Apple, such price hikes do not impact the sales much, especially for the upper end of models,” Faisal Kawoosa, founder, Techarc, said.
That distinction is important as Apple pushes further into the premium end. The iPhone 18 Pro starts at Rs 1,64,900 and the Pro Max at Rs 1,79,900, while the new foldable iPhone Duo starts at Rs 2,99,900 and goes up to Rs 4,49,900 for the 2TB variant.
For Apple, the strategy amounts to a trade-off. Higher prices can provide a cushion against continuing volatility in memory and chip costs, but they also remove one of its traditional levers for expanding volumes, which is making last year’s iPhone cheaper when the new one arrives.