The iPhone is transitioning to $2,000 price tags, regardless of whether it’s made in the U.S. or not

During the time when President Donald Trump kept insisting that Apple manufacture the iPhone in the United States, there was a lot of fearmongering going on around the topic. Some people made grand claims that the iPhone would cost $3,000 or even more, while others said that a $2,500 price tag would be inevitable.While the insistence on an iPhone manufactured in the U.S. has died down a bit, it seems that the price tags that analysts were warning consumers about may just see the light of day anyway. At least, according to Apple insider Mark Gurman, who talked about this possibility in the latest edition of his newsletter Power On.

There is now a $2,000 iPhone model already present on the market: the iPhone 17 Pro Max 2 TB variant. This phone is a bit overkill, intended mostly for really hardcore professional users who record a lot of high-resolution footage, but it has set the precedent for future iPhone models and their pricing.

According to Gurman, the inclusion of a $2,000 iPhone is a very strategic play on Apple’s part, because it’s normalizing such a price for the company’s flagship smartphones.

Apple has a three-year plan for the iPhone, which includes the foldable iPhone, as well as the 20th anniversary iPhone Pro model, which will be a completely different beast entirely. Those models, understandably, will not come cheap, and even their standard configurations may cost you up to $2,000, if not more.

This was expected, of course. Apple can only keep selling its phones for around the same price for so long. Threats from tariffs, the unstable supply chain, more expensive 2 nm processors, and other factors will make sure that the $2,000 price tag will become the norm pretty soon.

And that can lead in two directions: either people will stop buying new iPhone models as often, or everything will continue as normal because the higher prices will be accepted by the masses. In my opinion, the second scenario is way more likely, and will almost certainly pave the way for Samsung and other manufacturers to adopt these higher prices as well.

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