Inside the iPhone 18Pro: What's Driving Performance, AI, and Cost

Apple's iPhone 18 Pro hardware costs rose ~$340 per unit, driven by memory inflation, a 2nm chip, new packaging, and an in-house modem.

• Memory crisis reshapes BOM: NAND prices doubled and DRAM rose 4.5x in 12 months, adding up to $150 to iPhone BOM; Apple only raised retail price $100, absorbing some margin hit.
• QLC trade-off: Apple uses cheaper, denser QLC NAND in 1TB/2TB models and faster TLC in 256GB/512GB variants, with 12GB LPDDR5X across the board, to contain costs.

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