iPhone 18 Pro Storage Upgrade Costs Apple About $192, WSJ Says

Apple charges iPhone 18 Pro buyers $600 to go from 256GB to 1TB of storage, while the extra flash costs the company an estimated $192, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis published this week. That puts the iPhone 18 Pro storage markup at a little over three times Apple’s direct cost, down from almost ten times a year ago.

The comparison, reported by 9to5Mac and Macworld, uses the same upgrade on last year’s model. On the iPhone 17 Pro, moving from 256GB to 1TB cost buyers $400, and the WSJ put Apple’s cost for that flash at about $42.

iPhone 18 Pro storage prices and estimated costs

Apple’s US store lists the iPhone 18 Pro at $1,199 for 256GB, $1,399 for 512GB, $1,799 for 1TB and $2,399 for 2TB. The cost figures below are WSJ and TechInsights estimates, not numbers Apple has published.

• 256GB to 512GB: buyers pay $200, the same as on the iPhone 17 Pro. Apple’s estimated cost for the extra 256GB rose from about $15 to about $66, cutting its gross profit on the step from roughly $185 to $134.
• 256GB to 1TB: buyers pay $600, up from $400. Apple’s estimated cost rose from about $42 to about $192.

The ratio fell, but the dollar margin did not. Subtracting the estimated cost, Apple keeps about $408 on the 1TB upgrade, compared with about $358 on the iPhone 17 Pro.

Why flash memory got so expensive for Apple

The squeeze comes from AI data centers. In an October 28 report, the WSJ cited TechInsights estimates that NAND flash prices have risen about fivefold in a year, from a low of 5 cents per gigabyte in 2023 to more than 30 cents.

Two years ago, Apple bought nearly twice as much flash as Microsoft, Amazon, Meta and Google combined. Those four hyperscalers now buy about double Apple’s volume, and TechInsights expects Apple to spend around $25 billion on flash this year for roughly the amount that cost it $6 billion last year. Suppliers such as Kioxia, one of the biggest winners of the AI build-out as noted in our Kioxia stock report, now hold more pricing power.

Apple acknowledged the pressure when it reported results on November 2. CFO Kevan Parekh guided to a December-quarter gross margin of 45% to 46%, mainly because of higher memory prices, as we reported in our Apple earnings coverage.

What it means for buyers

Higher-capacity iPhones are now more expensive in absolute terms, and a smaller markup does not make them cheaper. Memory prices are not expected to ease soon, a trend explained in our guide on why RAM is so expensive. Buyers who rarely fill their phones may save money by choosing a lower tier and paying for cloud storage instead, while those who shoot a lot of 4K or ProRes video still have few alternatives to a bigger internal drive.