Apple Inc is weighing raising prices for the iPhone lineup coming out later this year, and would avoid blaming the increases on US tariffs on goods from China, the Wall Street Journal said, citing people familiar with the matter who it did not name.
Apple would attribute any price increases to new features and design changes, it said.
High-end iPhones, including the Pro and Pro Max models, would be produced in China, even as Apple builds up capacity in Indian factories, the newspaper reported.
Photo: Reuters
Apple is seeking to import most of the iPhones it sells in the US from India by the end of next year, accelerating a shift beyond China to mitigate risks related to tariffs and geopolitical tensions, Bloomberg News has reported.
Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
A few hours after the Journal report, US President Donald Trump said he had spoken to Apple CEO Tim Cook. Cook said during a recent earnings call that Apple could incur costs of about US$900 million this quarter due to tariffs.
Trump didn’t address the potential price increases, instead focusing on how he thinks the company will end up raising its US spending plan beyond the US$500 billion that it had pledged in February. “He’s going to be building a lot of plants in the US for Apple,” Trump said.
Consumers and analysts have been bracing for Apple price increases for more than a month. Bloomberg News reported last month that the company stocked up on inventory to prepare for the tariffs and that price increases were growing more likely.
Shares of Apple climbed 6.2 percent to US$210.79 in New York after the US and China moved to de-escalate their trade dispute, spurring a broader rally across markets.
Separately, Chinese shipments of foreign-branded cellphones, including Apple’s iPhones, dropped by 49.6 percent year-on-year in March, according to data released yesterday by a government-affiliated research company.
Calculations based on data from the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology showed that March shipments of foreign-branded phones in China decreased from 3.747 million a year earlier to 1.887 million units.
Additional reporting by Reuters
UNCERTAINTIES: Exports surged 34.1% and private investment grew 7.03% to outpace expectations in the first half, although US tariffs could stall momentum The Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) yesterday raised its GDP growth forecast to 3.05 percent this year on a robust first-half performance, but warned that US tariff threats and external uncertainty could stall momentum in the second half of the year. “The first half proved exceptionally strong, allowing room for optimism,” CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) said. “But the growth momentum may slow moving forward due to US tariffs.” The tariff threat poses definite downside risks, although the scale of the impact remains unclear given the unpredictability of US President Donald Trump’s policies, Lien said. Despite the headwinds, Taiwan is likely
When Lika Megreladze was a child, life in her native western Georgian region of Guria revolved around tea. Her mother worked for decades as a scientist at the Soviet Union’s Institute of Tea and Subtropical Crops in the village of Anaseuli, Georgia, perfecting cultivation methods for a Georgian tea industry that supplied the bulk of the vast communist state’s brews. “When I was a child, this was only my mum’s workplace. Only later I realized that it was something big,” she said. Now, the institute lies abandoned. Yellowed papers are strewn around its decaying corridors, and a statue of Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin
UNIFYING OPPOSITION: Numerous companies have registered complaints over the potential levies, bringing together rival automakers in voicing their reservations US President Donald Trump is readying plans for industry-specific tariffs to kick in alongside his country-by-country duties in two weeks, ramping up his push to reshape the US’ standing in the global trading system by penalizing purchases from abroad. Administration officials could release details of Trump’s planned 50 percent duty on copper in the days before they are set to take effect on Friday next week, a person familiar with the matter said. That is the same date Trump’s “reciprocal” levies on products from more than 100 nations are slated to begin. Trump on Tuesday said that he is likely to impose tariffs
READY TO BUY: Shortly after Nvidia announced the approval, Chinese firms scrambled to order the H20 GPUs, which the company must send to the US government for approval Nvidia Corp chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) late on Monday said the technology giant has won approval from US President Donald Trump’s administration to sell its advanced H20 graphics processing units (GPUs) used to develop artificial intelligence (AI) to China. The news came in a company blog post late on Monday and Huang also spoke about the coup on China’s state-run China Global Television Network in remarks shown on X. “The US government has assured Nvidia that licenses will be granted, and Nvidia hopes to start deliveries soon,” the post said. “Today, I’m announcing that the US government has approved for us
RSS