Apple has made an unusual move in India after its latest iPhone launch: instead of cutting prices on older models, it has raised them sharply. The revised prices appeared on Apple's India website shortly after the September 9 launch event, pushing the cost of several existing iPhones significantly higher.
The iPhone 17 now starts at ₹99,900, up from ₹82,900 when it launched in India last year. That's a ₹17,000 increase for the 256GB model. The 512GB version has also moved higher, making Apple's mainstream iPhone considerably more expensive than it was just a day earlier.
The increase isn't limited to the iPhone 17. The iPhone 16 has risen from ₹69,900 to ₹89,900, a ₹20,000 jump, while the iPhone 17e and iPhone Air have also received price increases. The scale of the changes is particularly striking because these are existing models rather than newly launched products.
The biggest jump comes on the high-storage iPhone Air. Reuters reports that its 1TB version has climbed to ₹2,24,900, representing a 41% increase. That makes India one of the markets where Apple's latest pricing adjustments have been most aggressive.
This breaks with the pattern Indian buyers usually expect from an iPhone launch. When a new generation arrives, older models often become more attractive through lower pricing or remain at their existing prices. This time, Apple has gone in the opposite direction, leaving shoppers with fewer opportunities to pick up an older iPhone at a discount from Apple's official store.
There is a broader reason behind the change. Memory and storage components have become more expensive, with demand from the rapidly expanding AI infrastructure industry putting additional pressure on the supply of memory chips. Reuters reports that Apple's global price adjustments are linked to those higher component costs.
India's position adds another layer to the pricing story. The country has become an increasingly important manufacturing base for Apple's iPhone supply chain, but local production does not remove all the costs associated with selling the devices in India. Import duties on components and the country's 18% GST continue to influence the final retail price.
The timing also means the new iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max arrive alongside a more expensive older lineup. The iPhone 18 Pro starts at ₹1,64,900 in India, while the iPhone 18 Pro Max starts at ₹1,79,900. Apple's first foldable iPhone, the iPhone Duo, starts at ₹2,99,900.
For buyers, the result is straightforward: waiting for Apple's new generation has not made the older iPhones cheaper this year. Someone who had been considering the iPhone 17 or iPhone 16 may now have to rethink that purchase, particularly if the goal was to get last year's hardware at a lower official price.
The bigger question is whether these increases will remain in place. Memory prices are being pushed by demand that extends well beyond smartphones, and AI data centres are becoming major consumers of the same underlying components. If those pressures continue, Apple may not be the last smartphone maker forced to pass higher costs on to customers.
For now, though, Apple's message to Indian buyers is unusually clear: the arrival of a new iPhone generation has made several older iPhones more expensive, not cheaper.