According to Mark Gurman's recent report, Apple's 20th anniversary smartphone will feature an "extraordinarily complex" design.
While that sounds great for Apple fans, it will come with a few major drawbacks.
Due to the current state of the U.S. import tariffs on goods manufactured in China (currently at a rate of 145%), Apple is attempting to move iPhone manufacturing to India by next year, but the iPhone 18 appears to be the exception.
That means you might want to buckle up and prepare for a collision course with some big price tags.
iPhone 18 is so complex it can only be made in China
According to Mark Gurman's latest Apple report for Bloomberg, the 20th anniversary phone is too complex to manufacture outside of China.
The Apple iPhone 18 Pro is expected to feature extra glass with an "extraordinarily complex design" that requires new parts and production techniques that can only be tackled by Apple's experienced Chinese manufacturing sites.
We don't know much about the iPhone 18 Pro yet, as it is still over a year away from its expected launch window. But the iPhone X did see a major design overhaul for the iPhone's 10th anniversary.
The iPhone X was the first Apple phone to feature an edge-to-edge screen with a Super Retina display, FaceID, a dual 12-megapixel rear camera setup, and wireless charging.
All of those features have now become the default for subsequent mainstream iPhones, so it's likely the 20th anniversary design will be just as foundational, even if we don't have a lot of detail on what that redesign is expected to include.
iPhones are just too complex in general
One of the arguments in favor of high tariffs on Chinese goods is that they incentivize domestic manufacturing.
Except, that's clearly not the case.
As we've previously covered, with the current tariffs in place, an iPhone 16 Pro Max with 1 TB of storage would cost more than $2,000 (currently $1,599). Manufacturing that same phone in the US would likely push the price over $3,000.
And that's not just due to the price of U.S. labor alone. Apple's iPhones are incredibly complex devices.
According to a report by the Financial Times, there are 2,700 parts in a single iPhone. Those parts are currently manufactured in more than 700 production sites.
Only 30 of those 700+ production sites operate their entire business outside of Chinese borders. And the benefit to Apple's existing production lines is that most of those 700 production sites are close together and can easily coordinate to make the complex parts that make up a single iPhone.
Per 9to5mac, those intricate supply chains took decades to develop. And that's the biggest impediment to Apple moving its production entirely out of China.
While Apple is currently planning to move iPhone production to India, that will be a challenging process even for phones that aren't expected to come with extra layers of design complexity.
What this means for iPhone pricing
Most likely, prices are going to go up across the board. Some iPhone parts are already made domestically in the United States, including the display and FaceID sensors, but the deep supply lines and complexity of modern devices makes switching production sites a serious problem.
Apple's success in recent years is, in large part, due to the expertise and easy collaboration of its Chinese production teams.
But even if Apple is able to move all production outside of China, there are still tariffs on goods made in India. While that rate is currently 26%, that could easily change.
For the iPhone 17 and iPhone 18 generations, it seems likely that Apple's phones will command a steep price due to import tariffs. Especially with the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max 20th Anniversary editions.
So if you're looking forward to the next blockbuster iPhone, you may want to start a savings fund now, and hope you can store away enough to compete with the tariff war.
