Apple may be paying more to build the iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Pro, says leaker Revegnus, which has us concerned about a price rise for potential buyers.
The Twitter tipster states that the iPhone 15's production cost will be 12% more expensive than it was for the iPhone 14. It's supposedly even higher for the Pro model, which will apparently cost 20% more to build than the iPhone 14 Pro.
Revegnus lays the blame for this at the door of TSMC, the company that builds Apple's iPhone chipsets. Prices are likely rising because the chip maker is allegedly struggling to meet Apple's demand for its latest 3-nanometer process, a report from EE Times says (via MacRumors).
This newly-developed process will apparently be used to build not only the rumored A17 chipset for the iPhone 15 Pro models, but also the Apple M3 series of chips assumed to be arriving on Macs later this year, which sounds like a lot of chips that need making. Small wonder that TSMC feels the need to charge Apple more for all of this work.
Will we have to pay more?
We doubt that Apple would pass on the full 12%/20% cost of these price increases to consumers, if the rumors are indeed accurate. A jump to a $900-ish iPhone 15 or an approximately $1,200 iPhone 15 Pro would likely prove too big a hike for regular phone buyers, and be very unpopular indeed.
However, given previous rumors of a $100 price increase for iPhone 15 Pro models, it feels likely we'll see Apple try to bump up the iPhone's price a little to try and offset these increased production costs. A price reduction for basic iPhone 15 models to try and encourage sales, as one source claims, feels unlikely, even if Apple struggled to shift the iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Plus over the past few months.
In the U.S., prices for the latest flagship iPhones have remained stable since the iPhone 12 series debuted in 2020, so it would be a shame to see them go up. However, the rest of the world saw a small price bump for the iPhone 14 series last year, so arguably it is American customers' turn to face an increase.
You can read up on all the iPhone 15, iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max rumors we've gathered so far in our hub pages. Staying up to date with those will minimize the risk of any unpleasant pricing surprises come the new phones' assumed September release date. They'll also tell you about the cool new upgrades we may also expect, such as USB-C ports, a new curved design, and a more powerful telephoto camera on the Pro Max.
