An iPhone would cost $3,500 if made in the USA, analyst claims

Apple iPhone prices could soar to around $3,500 (around £2,800) if the company was forced to resort to manufacturing the devices in the United States.

That’s according to a leading technology analyst predicting a 3.5x increase in the $999 price of the current iPhone 16 Pro model if the current climate of tariffs on goods imported into the United States gives Apple little alternative but to bring device assembly back to the US.

US government officials and the president himself are touting a glorious, but highly unlikely, return to the heyday of domestic manufacturing, predicting factories will come “roaring back” and the best iPhone models will be made on US soil.

However, the logistic or replicating the manufacturing process in the United States means the goal is little more than a “fictional tale” according to Dan Ives, global head of technology research at Wedbush Securities.

He told CNN: “You build that (supply chain) in the US with a fab in West Virginia and New Jersey. They’ll be $3,500 iPhones,” he said, referring to fabrication plants, or high-tech manufacturing facilities where computer chips that power electronic devices are normally made.”

Ives also reckons it would take Apple about three years to move as little as 10% of its supply chain to the United States.

The iPhone – arguably the most influential consumer product on earth – has been identified by members of the administration as an example of what could be made in the US.

“The army of millions and millions of human beings screwing in little, little screws to make iPhones, that kind of thing is going to come to America,” Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick recently said. “It’s going to be automated.”

Currently around 90% of iPhones are manufactured in China so it would be quite the operation for Apple to make significant changes. Apple is currently promising to invest around $500 billion in the United States in efforts to make more of its products on home soil.

An impossible task

Like it or not, folks, the technology you purchase is only as cheap as it because components are manufactured, and devices assembled in the far east. There’s a vast infrastructure, city-sized factories, and labour costs that pale in comparison to the United States of America and everywhere else for that matter.

It’s absolutely unfeasible to just shift manufacturing to the United States for the iPhone. An absolute fantasy.

The idea Apple could suddenly turn to suppliers in the United States to a) acquire the raw materials necessary (which itself requires imported rare earth metals) to build the components, b) access companies that would build these various components c) create a factory infrastructure that would assemble the devices at scale and d) pay everyone a living wage to do so while maintaining prices is outrageous.

Globalisation is the only reason these products exist in the first place. iPhones are made with Samsung screens and Sony camera sensors, and even the homegrown Qualcomm modems are manufactured in Asia.