Apple Cuts iPhone 18 Pro Orders 15-20% as Memory Costs Bite

Apple has told some suppliers to cut production of components for the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max, with October orders slashed by at least 15% compared with the original request, Nikkei Asia reported.

A senior corporate executive told Nikkei the reduction "ranges between 15% and 20%," and said Apple "has taken a more conservative stance on shipment volumes since early September," when the two phones launched.

The stated reason, in the paper's own words: "soaring memory chip costs and price increases have dampened consumer demand." The iPhone 18 Pro starts at $1,199 and the Pro Max at $1,299, each $100 above the comparable iPhone 17 Pro SKU. One source quoted in follow-on coverage was blunt about the sticker: "For a smartphone, this price is simply too expensive."

UBS analysts, cited alongside the Nikkei report, wrote that "declining wait times against a backdrop of stable supply, combined with demand elasticity risk from recent price increases, is increasingly concerning to us."

The cut lands in the same week Samsung cleared 100 trillion won in Q3 profit on AI memory demand, and in a market where hyperscalers continue to pull advanced memory capacity toward AI datacenters. It is also our 84th Apple-tagged alert in 90 days on the Apple tracker, but the first that reads as AI-infrastructure demand squeezing the Pro bill of materials rather than Apple squeezing a feature.

The Nikkei story rests on unnamed sources, with the specific 15-20% figure attributed to a single senior executive; no second major outlet has independently confirmed the number as of publication.