The new iPhone 18 Pro Max has arrived, and Apple is charging $100 more for it than last year’s model. The smaller iPhone 18 Pro isn’t spared either — it also costs more this time around. Then there’s the iPhone Fold, Apple’s first foldable iPhone, which comes in at a steep $1,999. That’s not just expensive — it’s “used car” money, and unlike some used cars, this one probably won’t break down in six months.
Given that this is Apple, I didn’t expect the new iPhone lineup to be cheap. What actually caught me off guard was my own reaction: when the $100 price bump became official, my first thought was “that’s not so bad.” Only a hundred dollars more? Compared to what I’d braced for, it almost felt like a relief.
Which says more about Apple’s marketing than it does about the price itself. For a moment, I was genuinely relieved to be paying more.
Price Anchoring: How Apple Uses It to Make You Feel Like You’re Getting a Deal
Apple’s fiercely loyal fanbase isn’t an accident — it’s the result of years of deliberate brand-building: ad after ad, interview after interview, keynote after keynote. Yes, Apple makes genuinely good phones and tablets. But the real driver of that loyalty is charisma — helped along, of course, by the fact that Huawei can’t compete in the US market.
Apple has plenty of marketing and psychological tricks up its sleeve, and on event day, we saw a classic one in action: price anchoring.
Price anchoring works by setting expectations around a higher, unofficial price first — then undercutting it with the real, lower price. The result: instant relief, and suddenly you feel like you got a deal.
Expectations cut both ways. We’ve all been let down chasing something that seemed too good to be true. But we’ve also felt genuine relief when reality turns out better than we feared — even if “better” just means “less bad.”
Some wild rumors
For months before the September 9 “Surprise and Shine” event, rumors about pricing for the iPhone 18 Pro duo and the new iPhone Duo (I still can’t get over that shockingly bland moniker!) ran wild.
Nearly every leaker and tipster was convinced the foldable iPhone would cross $2,000 — some pointed to a price as high as almost $2,500. That’s a $500 gap between the rumored price and the actual $1,999 — not a small difference, and a genuine relief in an economy where $500 buys less every day.
The iPhone 18 Pro Max and iPhone 18 Pro didn’t escape the rumor mill either, with some reports pointing to price hikes of $200–$300 or more. The most extreme prediction had the Pro Max reaching $1,625.
Instead, John Ternus’ company (sorry, Tim Cook) kept the increase to just $100 across both Pro models.
The iPhone 18 Pro now starts at $1,199, up from $1,099 for the iPhone 17 Pro. The iPhone 18 Pro Max now starts at $1,299, up from $1,199 for the iPhone 17 Pro Max.
The reason behind the rumors
These rumors didn’t spread just because Apple wanted people bracing for higher prices. There’s a real cause behind them: the ongoing “RAMpocalypse,” a global memory and storage chip shortage hitting the entire tech industry. AI projects and AI models — the current obsession across tech — are consuming massive amounts of RAM, forcing handset makers to pay significantly more for memory and storage chips.
Apple isn’t alone here. The Galaxy S26 launched with a $100 price hike at the start of 2026, and the Pixel 11 followed suit just last month. Chinese smartphone makers are feeling the pressure too — this isn’t limited to the biggest players.
What Apple did differently was turn the situation to its advantage through price anchoring. It’s a risky strategy: if rumors overshoot and suggest too steep a price hike, potential buyers can get spooked months before launch and decide to hold onto their current phone instead.
Steve Jobs did this 16 years ago
Remember what Steve Jobs did back in 2010 when he unveiled the original iPad? He paced the stage, talking through what “pundits” expected Apple to charge — $999 — and left that number glowing on the screen behind him for what felt like forever.
Then, after a dramatic pause, he revealed the real price: $499. Half of what everyone braced for. Suddenly, that price tag looked like the deal of the century.
Fast forward to September 9, 2026, and Apple’s iPhone 18 Pro duo and the foldable iPhone Duo launch felt like it came straight from the same playbook. Though I doubt Jobs would’ve settled for a name as flat as “Duo” — something like “iFold” feels more on-brand. And hey, that naming logic practically writes the sequel: the iFlip.
