If you are among those who have criticized the prices of the iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max, calling them too high, there seems to be bad news on the horizon for you. In fact, next year the iPhone 15 lineup could increase in pricethis time due to a move by TSMC.
The Taiwanese chipmaker, in fact, has recently doubled the prices of its 3nm chips compared to less advanced nodes. This means that the first to be affected will be Apple, which will implement 3nm TSMC chips in the iPhone 15 and which may even have convinced the Taipei-based company to relocate part of its semiconductor production with more advanced nodes to the United States.
To be precise, a 3nm chip wafer will cost $20,000, versus 10,000 for a 7nm chip and 16,000 for a 5nm one. The price increase is obviously due to the reduction in the size of the node, and therefore to the increase in the complexity of the production process. For this reason, many manufacturers could be pushed not to make the “jump” to 3 nm immediately, but to remain anchored on less efficient but also less expensive nodes, such as the 4 nm and the 5 nm one.
Obviously, such a price increase, equal to the 50% compared to the 7 nm node and at 20% compared to the 5 nm one, could increase the price of the iPhone 15: this should be true especially in the case of the two “Pro” models, since the vanilla versions of the iPhones next-gen they will still have an A16 Bionic chip, built with 4nm TSMC node
To make matters worse, there is the fact that, according to rumors, Apple will use Premium materials for the iPhone 15 Pro and Ultra, switching to a titanium body and curved edges. In short, it seems that the iPhone 15 will be even less cheap of their predecessors.
