The price of the iPhone 17 series in South Africa will be lower than the iPhone 16 line-up was at launch — the second year in a row that Apple’s smartphones have reduced in price year over year.
The iPhone 17 series, which was unveiled on Tuesday, is now available for pre-order through iStore, the Core Group-owned South African Apple retail chain, and will be shipped to consumers by 19 September, when they will also be available in-store.
The lower prices are the result of a strengthening rand. At the launch of the iPhone 16 range on 13 September 2024, the rand was trading at R17.74/US$. The currency was stronger, at R17.37, to the dollar at market close on Thursday, representing a 2.1% increase in rand strength in the past year.
The iPhone 17 models have declined in price by a percentage in line with the rand’s improvement against the dollar over the period. One notable exception to this is the base iPhone 17 256GB model which, at R20 799, is 13% cheaper than the equivalent iPhone 16 model at launch.
Apple has made big changes to its latest line-up, including removing all 128GB variants, making 256GB of storage the minimum standard across all its smartphones. The bigger drop in the base iPhone 17 variant is accompanied by a 9.3% decline in pricing for the iPhone 17 512GB model.
Although the iPhone 17 range also features four models, the iPhone Plus has been replaced by the ultra-slim iPhone Air. The Air offers Apple users a differentiated aesthetic by cramming high-end performance into a 5.6mm frame but at the cost of battery life and cameras. iPhone Air pricing starts at R25 999 for the 256GB model, rising to R31 499 for the 512GB variant and R36 799 for a 1TB version.
Latest chips
The reduction in price is even more significant considering that the iPhone 17 line-up features Apple’s latest A19 or A19 Pro chips and have neural processing capabilities for running on-device AI models.
Pricing for the iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max models fell by between 0.5% and 1.6%, below the 2.1% increase in the rand relative to the dollar. At the top of the range, Apple has introduced a 2TB iPhone 17 Pro Max at a whopping R52 499 (it costs $1 999 in the US).
The greatest threat to price stability over the past year has been US President Donald Trump’s tariff wars. At the start of the tariff war in February, Axiz CEO Craig Brunsden told TechCentral that the local tech sector would be largely shielded from tariff increases because South Africa is a net importer of hardware, most of which comes from Asia and not the US. Even companies headquartered in the US manufacture in the east, usually China, and use legal entities in Europe or Dubai to supply the region.
Read: Why the real story at Apple’s launch was eSim, not the iPhone Air
In the US, iPhone pricing also remained unchanged, despite Trump imposing steep import tariffs earlier this year. A 256GB version of the iPhone 17 base model will start at $799, the same as the previous iPhone 16 model with half the storage space. The iPhone 17 Pro starts at $1 099 for a 256GB model, the same as the previous year’s model with the same storage size, but without the option of a smaller-capacity phone at a lower $999 like the iPhone 16 Pro. — (c) 2025 NewsCentral Media
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