It's getting harder and harder to ignore the iPhone 15 Pro rumors claiming we may be facing a price increase for Apple's most desirable new iPhones.
Sources speaking to DigiTimes are suggesting there could be a $100 - $200 price jump, taking the start price of the iPhone 15 Pro to as high as $1,099 and the iPhone 15 Pro Max (or iPhone 15 Ultra depending on who you believe) to $1,299. This fits in with previous rumors of an increasing price, but there's no mention of increases for the vanilla iPhone 15 or the iPhone 15 Plus though. Hopefully, they'll still start at $799 and $899 respectively as their iPhone 14 counterparts did.
A higher price is already predicted to impact Apple's sales significantly. It could possibly result in an 8% drop in expected shipments, although some of this is because of a general 5% drop in total global smartphone sales too, says DigiTimes. That still works out to 77 million iPhone 15 units sold though, so Apple's not going to be in trouble.
Will the iPhone 15 Pro be worth the extra money?
If these pricing rumors are correct, then Apple's biggest challenge with the iPhone 15 series is convincing users that it's still worth buying despite the increased cost. Fortunately for Apple's bottom line, the new iPhones could still be worthwhile thanks to other rumored changes like larger storage capacities and bigger batteries, plus upgrades like the Pro models' Action button, a periscope telephoto camera on the Pro Max model and Dynamic Islands for all four expected versions of the iPhone 15.
The clock's ticking down to the expected Apple September event, which has been tipped to be taking place on September 12. All these rumors should finally be made official during this event's keynote, although we'll probably have to wait until the very end as usual to find out if these price hikes are coming or not.
