TrendForce has put a number on the iPhone 18 Pro six days before Apple shows it, and MacRumors reported the estimates on September 3. The research firm estimates a starting price of $1,249 to $1,299, against the $1,099 the iPhone 17 Pro starts at today, and $1,349 to $1,399 for the Pro Max, which starts at $1,199. That is $150 to $200 on each. Somewhere between 10 and 20 percent.
The cause is memory, and TrendForce is specific about it. A 256GB memory chip now costs nearly 400 percent more than it did a year ago, and the full bill of materials for a 256GB Pro is about 38 percent higher over the same period. Phone makers are buying into a market that the AI infrastructure buildout is also buying into. They are not the biggest buyer in the room.
TrendForce expects the foldable that reports have been calling the iPhone Ultra to start between $2,099 and $2,299, with the highest storage option potentially over $3,000. The standard iPhone 18 is not expected until spring 2027, and the same 10 to 20 percent is applied to it.
There is a second number already in circulation and it is lower. Mark Gurman reported at Bloomberg last month that Samsung and Google each added around $100 to their latest flagships, and that Apple has been watching them. That would land the iPhone 18 Pro at $1,199 and the Pro Max at $1,299. TrendForce sits $50 to $100 above that on both.
The distance between those two figures is the part with something in it. Neither says prices hold. What they differ on is how much of the memory bill Apple pays out of its own margins rather than at the till, and Apple has taken that cost before. It held the iPhone 17 Pro Max at $1,199 last year and raised the 17 Pro by $100, in a year when memory was already expensive and not yet this expensive.
For anyone buying, the storage tier is the number to read carefully on the day. Memory is the component that inflated, so the increase should not land evenly across the line. A base model absorbs one 256GB chip of cost. The step to 512GB or 1TB absorbs the same inflation again, which is how TrendForce arrives at a foldable over $3,000 while quoting $2,099 at the bottom of the same product. If the plan was to buy storage rather than the entry configuration, that step is where this year will feel different.
None of these are Apple's numbers. TrendForce is a research firm reading component costs from the outside, and its own June forecast was a 14 to 18 percent rise, which sits inside the wider range it is quoting now. Apple gives the real prices at its Surprise and shine event on Wednesday, September 9.