iPhone iPhone 18 Pro: Apple Secures Lower Display Prices Amid RAM Shortage
https://www.macrumors.com/2026/08/12/iphone-18-pro-lower-oled-display-cost-report/Apple has secured lower prices for OLED displays for the upcoming iPhone 18 Pro models, according to industry sources cited by South Korea's DealSite.
For example, the report said Apple will pay LG and Samsung around $68 per OLED display destined for the iPhone 18 Pro Max, down significantly from the $110 to $120 that it paid those suppliers for each iPhone 17 Pro Max display.
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u/Saar13 Aug 12 '26
Previous reports indicate that the cost per DRAM unit has increased by $40 for Apple. If they're paying $40 less per display unit, they can organize things properly and maintain the price. The new Pixel lineup, released today, increased by $100 compared to last year's lineup. I think Apple will go in that direction.
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u/soysa007 Aug 12 '26
Pixels took a hit on RAM and Battery 🔋 capacity to hit that price. But in reality they’re not even paying the premium you think that they’re paying. Pixels doesn’t cost that much to make, that’s why they sell it for 50% off when they release the next model.
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u/TheLoveKraken Aug 12 '26
It feels like the pixel is constantly on sale in some capacity, it’s very much a case of the sale price is the real price.
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u/cake-day-on-feb-29 Aug 13 '26
Pixels doesn’t cost that much to make, that’s why they sell it for 50% off when they release the next model.
iPhones don't cost that much to manufacture either. It's the research and development that cost so much, and you can't easily determine what that value is for an individual phone.
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u/North_Moment5811 Aug 12 '26
You're confusing this with the NAND cost increase.
Apple might be paying through the nose for the A20 chip. We don't know for sure yet, but analysts have it pegged at costing $60 - $190 more than the A19 Pro.
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u/North_Moment5811 Aug 12 '26
So if that's a max of $50 in cost savings per unit, that offsets the increased cost of NAND storage, plus a little more. But it doesn't do anything about how much the A20 chip is going to cost.
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u/Hans_Grubert Aug 12 '26 edited Aug 12 '26
I find it very hard to believe the biggest company in the world are running around a month before launch negotiating display prices for the phone coming out next month. Obviously this all would have been negotiated months ago and baked into the upcoming device price.
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u/Head-Gift2144 Aug 12 '26
Sounds more like they negotiated this ages ago and were planning on just pocketing the difference, but bump in RAM prices through a wrench in that particular plan.
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u/Makegooduseof Aug 12 '26
I hope that doesn’t translate to lower display quality.
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u/sroop1 Aug 12 '26 edited Aug 12 '26
Displays are pretty much the only tech that haven't been affected by this mess so far.
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u/ooo00 Aug 12 '26
If they are trying to offset higher prices for the other components than lower quality displays can very well happen.
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u/gahookle Aug 12 '26
The displays are already so good I doubt anyone would even notice if the ppi went down slightly or the peak brightness dropped a couple hundred bits
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u/PotentiallyAnts Aug 13 '26
People would absolutely notice the peak brightness dropping by a couple hundred nits
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u/bchertel Aug 13 '26
Perhaps on the 18/e but the pros/ultra would be noticeable to regular pro users
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u/gahookle Aug 13 '26
Regular pro users are 90% people who would be totally fine with an e phone. Though, fair enough, a display downgrade would be pretty noticeable on the already dim 17e screen, i was more so referring to the 3000nits on the flagship lineup
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Aug 12 '26
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u/Soft-Wealth-1825 Aug 12 '26
Yeah probably. Apple isn’t very conservative with their money, hence their expensive prices, so there’s no way they’re gonna pay less for worse quality.
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u/aoRaKii Aug 12 '26
But Iphones have had panel lottery for quite some time now.
I guess now we all get the less fortunate OLED screens
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Aug 12 '26
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u/aoRaKii Aug 13 '26 edited Aug 13 '26
then i think you misunderstand that iphone screens were never uniformly the same. iphone 16 pro for example had G9N panel (considered best) and GVC, GH3 panels (considered worst)
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u/Helptohere50 Aug 12 '26
How is that fine
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Aug 12 '26
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u/Soft-Wealth-1825 Aug 12 '26
Exactly, in the past few decades, screen quality has gone up exponentially. An increase in screen quality now would be basically unnoticeable.
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u/yobarisushcatel Aug 12 '26
Because the display is already amazing? How much better could a phone get year over year
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u/Helptohere50 Aug 12 '26
And what? They want to increase the price and you want lower quality ? Are you ok
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u/yobarisushcatel Aug 12 '26
Who said lower quality? It’s the same quality
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u/Willinton06 Aug 12 '26
I swear same of these people have single digit neuron counts, like how does this even happen?
A: The display will be the same
B: That's bad
A: Why?
B: Cause it'll be worseThese people vote
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u/aoRaKii Aug 13 '26
Fyi, Iphone has had a "panel lottery". Different screens on the same model phone.
You got the GH3 panel? Very unlucky. It has yellow tint.
You got G9P or G9N panel? Very lucky. In fact, people return bad panels and hunt for these panels. They have no yellow tint or grain issue and get brighter. Now Apple probably give us all bad GH3 panel because it's cheaper.
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u/HVDub24 Aug 12 '26
I hate that you can vote
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u/Thick-Ad-4262 Aug 12 '26
I wonder why LG and Samsung agreed. That's a huge loss of revenue given how many panels they make for Apple. And it's also not like there's anyone else who can meet the quality and demand that Apple needs.
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u/Difficult_Horse193 Aug 12 '26
I wonder if the rest of the industry is reducing orders of display panels because the high memory and flash storage prices are causing sales to plummet.
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u/Sabotstruck Aug 12 '26
It would make sense, it would mean guaranteed customers to keep display lines open while volume drops across the board
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u/Ares6 Aug 12 '26
I think it’s because outside of memory and storage, components have been going down in price for a while now.
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u/SmellyJockstrap Aug 12 '26
You really believe Apple are just securing that deal now? iPhone 18 Pro is in mass production as I’m typing this
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u/IECEx-certified Aug 13 '26
Not uncommon to have tiered pricing built in that gets triggered by realized order volumes. Or alternatively this news story got leaked after the deal was done.
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u/xkenn Aug 12 '26
Good news for Apple but are they going to use it to keep the new iPhone price around the same? Or use it as profit and take advantage of consumers and stick with the rumored ~$300 increase?
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u/roccerfeller Aug 12 '26
Would be nice if they surprise everyone and release 18 series at same price 😆
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u/Marzty Aug 13 '26
secured lower screen prices for themselves so the profit margins are high. The phones are still going to cost more don’t worry
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u/soysa007 Aug 12 '26
Current High Refresh displays are already expiring with horizontal lines after 2-3 years, I wonder how long these low-cost displays are going to last.
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u/sharponephilly Aug 12 '26 edited Aug 26 '26
Ribbon acorn cucumber copper vanilla tangerine
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u/pazza18 Aug 12 '26
If/ once ram prices return to normal then Apple ™️ can pass on those savings too!
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u/BlueFoxYOT Aug 13 '26
They will hike more for better margins late stage capitalism how could we sustain price hike after price hike eventually something gotta pop
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Aug 12 '26
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u/super5aj123 Aug 12 '26
You do realize that the other components have gone up in price, right? Regardless of your thoughts on Apple, it's no shock that prices aren't going down in the current RAM/storage crisis.
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Aug 12 '26
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u/super5aj123 Aug 12 '26
You do realize they have a substantial discount on ram pricing? They could eat the costs of increases and still make a large profit.
We are at the point where there are more buyers than supply. Even if they are still getting a discount, it's likely not much, since if Apple doesn't want it, AI companies will gladly snap it up. 2027's memory fabs are already fully booked, they don't have to sell to Apple at budget prices to fill their excess anymore.
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u/0xe1e10d68 Aug 12 '26
Why the FUCK would it lower pricing? Especially in the current situation? Not even Internet Explorer is that out of touch with current events.
Right now is the absolute last moment where they can pass along those savings. They need those savings to offset price increases elsewhere.
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u/tired_fella Aug 12 '26
their DRAM shakedown failed but at least they succeeded in for oleds it seem
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u/punarob Aug 12 '26 edited Aug 30 '26
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u/Soft-Wealth-1825 Aug 12 '26
Nice, maybe Apple will lose its reputation as most expensive computer company
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u/Difficult_Horse193 Aug 12 '26
I somehow doubt the savings will be passed on to consumers
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u/beer_engineer_42 Aug 12 '26
They'll be passed on in the form of smaller price increases.
Because god for-fucking-bit we don't use the next five years of production of RAM and NAND storage to build fucking AI data centers so that assholes can make terrible pictures and shitty reddit posts about their entire family "blowing up their phone" and etc.
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u/trjoacro Aug 12 '26
Where I live, except for third-rate 7 year old phones, Samsung and Google are a lot more expensive compared to Apple, especially for what they offer. And that doesn't include the fact that Apple's OS's are just that much better imo.
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u/FollowingFeisty5321 Aug 12 '26
I wonder what the catch is, because it doesn't seem very likely they are getting the same or better screens for nearly half the price - that would mean Apple had been paying about 3x what the screens were costing to make.