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Comment by frollogaston | Hacker News Reader

I'd expect the iPhone price hikes to be less even in absolute $ than with the cheap phones. iPhones already had relatively large margins (as a %) for the newly increased costs to partially eat into.

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Why would you expect Apple to give up their margin? The DRAM price hikes affect every smartphone vendor, even Samsung through opportunity cost. That means the competition will also need to hike their prices. And the competition has lower margin, so they have less choice here.

Because Apple's main competition is themselves a few years ago, when they sold an iPhone or whatever to a happy customer who might return for an upgrade even though it still works. Not many people are switching platforms nowadays.

Apple has services and the App Store that still collects 30%. I don’t think they will raise iPhones prices by much but rumors say the iPhone Foldable is coming and that will be $2K+. People will pay it and that will subsidize the other models.

> Why would you expect Apple to give up their margin?

Price go up, demand go down: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply_and_demand#/media/File:...

(The iPhone is only a premium brand, not a Veblen good).

That's if iPhone costs go up and there are no other changes. As the parent said, competitors' products are also going up in price. I just don't consider the products interchangeable enough. Apple has its margins for a reason.

Also even if they had pure competitors, demand for high-end smartphones is pretty elastic. People will really just buy fewer phones if they get more expensive.

There's a limit to what even a wealthy customer can stomach. They need to consider what costs them more, Apple eating $50-$100 of the cost, or people holding on to an iPhone one year longer than usual.

These announcements have another effect of boosting sales now. Summer is usually a sales slump so selling more now is probably good for Apple.

The schedule is predictable now but in case you forget, you can always tell when the new iPhone is right around the corner because AT&T starts spamming your email and SMS with 'reminders' that you can get an iPhone 17 right now! Or for Father's Day! Or because you're eligible for an upgrade! Or...!

Only $1/mo for an iPhone 17 Pro Max! (With eligible trade-in of iPhone 16 Pro Max, on postpaid plan only)

Gotta get rid of as much of that stock as possible, but keep collecting 16s to harvest for repair (not that I object to improving repairability ,per se)!

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