Apple will delay the standard iPhone 18 to spring 2027, pushing autumn buyers toward Pro models that analysts expect to cost up to $200 more, reports show.
Key Points:
- Only the iPhone 18 Pro, the iPhone 18 Pro Max and Apple's first foldable handset are set for a September release.
- The standard iPhone 18 and the budget iPhone 18e slip to roughly March 2027, ending a decade of unified fall launches.
- iOS 27 reserves its most advanced on-device Siri model for phones carrying 12GB of memory.
iPhone 18 Pro Anchors Apple's Split September Launch
Weekend coverage of the company's autumn plans outlined a release calendar that Apple has never used in the iPhone's history.
The September event will carry the iPhone 18 Pro, the iPhone 18 Pro Max and a first foldable handset that some analysts price above $2,000, while the standard iPhone 18 and the budget iPhone 18e wait until spring. Everything affordable now slides into 2027.
The break is deliberate, not a supply failure.
Supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has said the two cheaper models will land around March 2027 carrying 9GB of memory, three gigabytes short of the Pro line and below the bar Apple set for its own software. The company has anchored its September window for more than a decade, and carrier upgrade contracts still run on that rhythm, which leaves customers rolling off a plan this autumn with no mid-tier successor to buy.
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Nabila Popal And IDC Read The Pro Price Signal
IDC senior director Nabila Popal estimated that the Pro and Pro Max could carry increases of as much as $200 over their predecessors, which would open the Pro near $1,299 and the Pro Max near $1,399. She revised that figure upward in late June, days after Apple lifted Mac and iPad prices by as much as $300 across more than a dozen products. The days of $50 price increases are over, she said.
Memory does the rest of the sorting. Apple set 12GB as the floor for the most advanced on-device model in iOS 27, so this year's cheaper phones will ship without the expressive Siri voices and the sharper dictation that public betas already show.
iPhone 17 Holds The Mid-Tier Through The Holidays
One analysis argued that the company built the split calendar as a margin lever rather than a repair for a broken supply chain.
The squeeze itself traces back to the memory market, where DRAM and NAND prices have climbed steeply as AI data centers absorb the available output from a handful of suppliers.
Apple absorbed that cost on iPhones through June and passed it along to buyers of nearly everything else it sells.
That reprieve looks temporary. The iPhone 17, which arrived last September at $799 with 8GB of memory, already sits below the iOS 27 threshold, and it will hold the mid-tier slot through the holiday quarter with no current-generation replacement on the shelf.
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