TL;DR
New iPhones cost more than in the US in nearly every major market, and the premium is set by import duties, local taxes and how much of the supply chain Apple has actually moved.
The buzz around an Apple launch is global, but the price that makes you reach for your wallet only exists in the US.
Counterpoint Research ran the numbers: the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max cost more in every other major market. Turkey is the worst, at nearly double the US price, with most of the gap going to local taxes.
The closer the factory, the higher the price
India is the iPhone's fourth-largest market and Apple's second-largest assembly base, turning out a quarter of all iPhones worldwide. Prices there still run 30% to 40% above the US.
The reason is simple: many of the parts inside a phone sold in India are imported, a finished handset pays full import duty, and then come the goods and services tax and a weakening rupee.
As Counterpoint put it, India is expensive mainly because the high-end models are not made there at first. Even a phone labelled Made in India has only about 20% local components; the rest is taxed on the way in.
Where it is cheap, there is always a reason
The second-cheapest market is the UAE, which charges 5% VAT and little else. China and Korea also skew low, thanks to brutal competition at home — Huawei, Oppo and Vivo in China, Samsung in Korea.
So the global price tag on an iPhone is really a tax bill: whoever keeps taxes low and the market bloody gets to pay less.
And yes, chips are part of this
After the September launch, older models went up 21% in the US and 41% in India. Back in June, former CEO Tim Cook warned that a chip shortage would push prices higher.
In one line: what an iPhone costs you depends less on Apple than on how your country taxes it, who assembles it, and whether anyone is around to compete with it.
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