Summer, WWDC, new operating systems and new MacBook Air. The good: new M2 chip and adapts to the new design language of the Mac. The bad: have you seen those prices? The worst: but how do they also raise the one from two years ago?
The Apple event served to discover that the MacBook Air M2 starts at 1,519 euros in its basic version (8 GB of RAM, 256 GB of storage), but also that a price increase to the M1 model, announced in October 2020, It had been in effect since February. From 1,129 euros it went to 1,219 euros.
Those 90 euros of unexpected increase -not to mention the price of the new M2- may be a foretaste of something to come and at this point it seems inevitable: the price increase that the iPhone 14especially the ones in the Pro line— . For many reasons.
A five-year period of static prices
About. Since the arrival of the iPhone X in 2017, the first in history to exceed 1,000 euros in its basic version, the prices of equivalent models have remained static. 1,159 euros for that size, 1,259 euros for the large size. What we have known since 2019 as Pro and Pro Max models.
The rise of 2017 was big and especially in 2018 it affected sales, in the cycle of the Xs, but a fifth successor with the same prices would be unprecedented. It is enough to see the trend for years in this graph, and how in 2017 the rise was interrupted.
We can add nuances to this trend, such as the fact that with the arrival of the “mini” models in 2020 the reference model, the one with the dry number, became more expensive by 100 euros, but even so, the Pro line, the most continuous, has remained immobile.
Unleashed inflation
No surprises here: with widespread price increases in both the United States and the European Union – in Spain we are breaking records of the last forty years— It is becoming increasingly difficult for a company to maintain prices like those of previous years. Their material, energy or transport costs increase and sooner or later they will have to allocate it to the price of their products.
An unfavorable exchange rate for the Eurozone
Except for specific moments that were ephemeral, the euro-dollar exchange rate had not been so unfavorable to the euro since the beginning of the century. A year ago, one euro was equivalent to 1.22 dollars. Today it remains at 1.07 dollars. 13% less than Apple, like other companies, has to correct by raising prices. It has already done so with the new Air. And with the old.
Unfavorable exchange rate, inflation, five years of static prices: the holy trinity that precedes a rise
A symptom that the rise of the M2 is not given by the margin left by its cost of materials or the amortization of a redesign, but by something else. If the rise in prices of the iPhone 14 is widespread, in the countries where we pay with euros it can be even more so.
The next iPhone, according to the most reliable leaks, will bring a new scheme, with two models of standard size, one of them Pro; and two other large ones, also only one of them Pro. That is: 14, 14 Max, 14 Pro and 14 Pro Max (or whatever Apple decides to call them). Thus the mini variant would die after its limited commercial success.
An increase in its prices will also fit into this new scheme, as Several analysts have also commented, which set the rise for each model at about 100 dollars. Not even a miracle seems able to prevent this increase. And seen the opening event of the WWDC 2022, who knows if even applying uploads to old models.
