Apple needs to provide better value if it wants to make the iPhone more expensive

Apple is currently facing several threats to its business at once and one of the most severe ones is the impact of President Donald Trump’s tariffs. Renowned industry insider Mark Gurman made an important point in his newsletter Power On today when he said that Apple needs to start doing more going forward.

The iPhone and other Apple products have been the subject of ridicule for years due to their hardware specifications. It wasn’t until the M-series of Apple silicon chips that the Mac and MacBook became the super powerful computers that they are today. Now tech aficionados often mock the iPhone and other Apple devices for the smaller amounts of RAM compared to competitors.

However that’s not really the most pressing matter now that tariffs are threatening Apple’s business model. The company has begun importing products from India and Vietnam instead of China to avoid the extreme tariff rates but the alternative production hubs have tariffs of their own.

It looks like Apple will have no choice but to increase the prices of its products sooner or later. The iPhone 17 series which will launch this year will likely be subject to price hikes because Apple cannot afford to bear the cost of tariffs. But if the company does make its phones more expensive then it’ll have to provide better value as well.