Everyone knows phones keep getting more expensive. We checked our own nine years of Malaysian launch coverage against Apple's US prices and the ringgit, and for the iPhone that stopped being true here in 2023.
The top iPhone costs RM500 less than it did two years ago. The cheapest one costs RM400 less and comes with twice the storage. And almost none of that is Apple being generous.
Table of Contents
The like-for-like numbers
Storage is where price comparisons usually go wrong, so this table sets it out. Apple doubled the entry storage on every model in 2025, which means a straight price comparison actually understates the change.
| Model | 2023 launch | Storage | 2025 launch | Storage | Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| iPhone (base) | RM4,399 | 128GB | RM3,999 | 256GB | RM400 cheaper, double the storage |
| iPhone Pro | RM5,499 | 128GB | RM5,499 | 256GB | Same price, double the storage |
| iPhone Pro Max | RM6,499 | 256GB | RM5,999 | 256GB | RM500 cheaper, like for like |
The Pro Max is the cleanest comparison because the storage is identical in both years. Same phone tier, same 256GB, RM500 less.
Apple did not cut the price. It cut the Malaysian price.
Here is the part that explains everything. In the United States the iPhone Pro Max cost 1,199 dollars in 2023 and it costs 1,199 dollars now. Not a cent of movement, in Apple's own announcements both years.
So the RM500 did not come from Cupertino deciding Malaysians deserved a break. It came from the ringgit.
The ringgit did more of the work than Apple did
Using the official monthly averages from Bank Negara, the ringgit went from RM4.6716 to the US dollar in September 2023 to RM4.2162 in September 2025. That is a 9.7 per cent strengthening between the two launches.
Apply that to the 2023 price and the arithmetic is unforgiving. RM6,499 becomes RM5,866. The currency alone was worth RM633 off the price of the phone.
The phone actually launched at RM5,999.
Apple kept about RM133 of it. That is roughly two percentage points, and on a phone at this price it is close to a rounding decision rather than a land grab. It is worth knowing all the same, because the story people will tell is that Apple cut prices in Malaysia, and what actually happened is that our currency recovered and Apple passed on most of the gain.
What this means if you are buying
The uncomfortable implication is that the price of your next iPhone in ringgit depends more on the currency market than on anything Apple announces on stage. The ringgit has kept strengthening since that 2025 launch: Bank Negara had it at RM4.0275 on 28 August 2026, stronger again than at the last iPhone launch.
If that holds through the next launch, the pattern above says the ringgit price should hold or fall again even if the dollar price does not move. That is not a forecast, it is what the last two years did.
It also reframes the usual advice about waiting for a discount. The iPhone 16 now sells for RM3,499 on Apple Malaysia, well under its launch price, so last year's model still falls the traditional way. The new thing is that the launch prices themselves have stopped climbing.
How we did this, and what it does not show
The 2023 Malaysian prices come from our own launch reporting at the time, which is the advantage of having covered this market since 2017. The 2025 and current prices were read from Apple Malaysia directly. The US prices are from Apple's own newsroom releases. The exchange rates are the official Bank Negara monthly averages published through data.gov.my.
Two honest limits. Launch prices are not street prices, and trade-ins, bank rebates and carrier bundles all move what people actually pay. And this is the iPhone only: it says nothing about Android, where the pressure on memory prices is real and pushing the other way.
