In the here and now, Nikkei Asia has revealed that production costs for the iPhone 14 range soared by about 20% compared to iPhone 13 models. The chief culprits are new Sony CMOS camera sensors, which have increased by 50%, and the A16 Bionic chip used in the iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max, which at $110 is almost 2.5x more than the A15 used iPhone 13 Pro and entry-level iPhone 14 models.
The latter helps to explain why Apple stuck to a previous generation chip in its new iPhone base models for the first time. The largely unchanged iPhone 14 undoubtedly helped Apple subsidize iPhone 14 Pro costs in the short-term, but that only delays the problem because iPhone 15 base models will adopt the A16 in 2023. And problems will arrive before then.
