UBS On iPhone 8 Pricing
UBS analyst Steven Milunovich believes the iPhone 8 will start at $870, and an upgraded model with 256GB of space in this scenario would cost $1,070, he wrote in a note distributed to clients on Monday.
Currently, Apple charges $649 or more for an iPhone 7, and the iPhone 7 Plus costs $769 and up.
Milunovich’s predictions are conspicuously $100 more than Apple’s current pricing for the 32 GB and 256 GB iPhone 7 Plus. Whilst their guessing strategy may be crude, I don’t think they are going to be wildly off-base.
Several reports indicate Apple has ordered upwards of 80 million OLED displays for 2017, implying the iPhone 8 is still going to be a mass market product. This is meant to appeal to the same people who buy high-end iPhones today and that puts an upper bound on pricing; even Apple can’t sell tens of millions of phones at $2000+ levels.
As such, anchoring close to the existing iPhone lineup price points (albeit with a premium) is sensible. I am currently thinking that the iPhone 8 will start at about $950 for the base model. I would be really surprised if the price for the highest capacity SKU, likely 256 GB, exceeds $1100 unsubsidised.