IT News on September 29th: At the beginning of this month, Apple launched the iPhone 18 Pro series of smartphones. The new models come with a range of upgrades, including variable aperture and a reduced size of the Dynamic Island, and their increased prices have sparked quite a discussion. In the Japanese market, the price of the iPhone 18 Pro has almost doubled compared to its counterparts from 5 years ago.
According to a report by Kyodo News today, Apple's iPhone Pro has an initial selling price of 219,800 yen (Note from the editor: at current exchange rates, this is approximately 9,385 yuan RMB) in Japan's direct sales channels, and the model with a maximum capacity of 2TB sells for over 400,000 yen (at current exchange rates, approximately 17,079 yuan RMB). For comparison, the iPhone Pro released in 2021 had an initial selling price of 122,800 yen (at current exchange rates, approximately 5,243 yuan RMB).
A man in his 50s who is a corporate executive and purchased 18 Pro units in Tokyo on the day of release said, "I don’t think the price will go down in the future. Even if it’s expensive, there’s nothing I can do about it." A mother in her 50s who came with her daughter to exchange for a new model said she didn’t make a purchase: “Mine is still from an earlier generation; I’ve been using it for over 4 years.”
It is reported that the price increases of new models such as iPhone and Pro are closely linked to the rising prices of DRAM. As major memory manufacturers shift their production capacity towards AI data centers, the price of regular memory continues to rise, which in turn leads to increasing manufacturing costs for electronic products such as smartphones and computers. In the past, Apple would lower the prices of older models in conjunction with the release of new ones, but this year they have decided to raise prices instead.
As the prices of new phones rise, more and more Japanese people are starting to consider second-hand phones. According to the Japanese second-hand trading platform Mercari, trade in second-hand iPhone devices becomes more active every year around the autumn when new phones are released. In October 2025, the number of units of the previous generation on sale soared to about five times that of the month before.
According to research data from the polling firm MM, the estimated sales volume of second-hand smartphones in Japan for the year 2025 is around 3.6 million units, setting a new historical high for seven consecutive years. It is predicted that this figure will reach 5 million units by the year 2029.
MM According to Yokoda Eiichi, the director of the comprehensive research institute, if we calculate based on the sales prices in various countries and the average income of consumers, the economic burden on Japanese consumers is about three times that of American consumers. He stated, "In the past, many people would buy new products without hesitation. Nowadays, they are gradually becoming products that are difficult to purchase." Yokoda also believes that not only in the second-hand market, but there will also be an increase in people turning to buy products from other brands.
