A new report claims that the iPhone 18The manufacturing costs of the 2nm processors the series will feature may mean Apple has to raise prices.Tariffs may stillIt's bad enough to force Apple to raise prices, but the projectediPhone FoldThe selling price will beover $2000,It's bad enough. Now, yet another report has confirmed previous claims that the entire iPhone 18 series will also be more expensive than previous generations.
The whistleblower "Digital Chat Station" cited a report in September 2024 and now claims on Weibo that the price of 2026 iPhone models may increase significantly.
The whistleblower wrote on Weibo: "Next year Apple/Qualcomm/TSMC will use TSMC's 2nm process. The cost is expected to increase significantly, and the price of new phones may rise again."
The reason specifically lies in the manufacturing cost of the new 2nm processors. Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo initially said in a September 2024 report that the high costs were partly due to lower yields in the production process.
Ming-Chi Kuo initially claimed that this meant Apple would limit the 2nm processor to the iPhone 18 Pro, and it was conceivable that it would actually only appear in the iPhone 18 Pro Max.
However, in March 2025, Ming-Chi Kuo revised his predictions as he stated that yield rates would increase significantly. He said that by January 2025, TSMC's yield rate had reached 60% to 70%, and by March, the yield rate was "well above this level."
Therefore, Ming-Chi Kuo believes that Apple is likely to use 2nm processors in the entire iPhone 18 series. This is also consistent with what other analysts have said.
If the prediction is correct, the advantage of the 2nm processor is that its performance should be 10% to 15% better than the upcoming iPhone 17 series. However, if"Digital Chat Station"If the prediction is correct, it will also bring unknown price increases.