The iPhone SEs $30 price bump looks like a pure 5G tax

Apple’s new iPhone SE was a predictable upgrade in almost every way except one: for the first time in the SE’s history, Apple has raised the price of its cheapest iPhone from $399 to $429, a $30 increase.

And it’s almost definitely 5G’s fault.

Price increases for 5G phones are common, even for Apple. When the company jumped from the iPhone 11 to the iPhone 12, it raised the price of the “standard” model from $699 to $829. But an estimate from Counterpoint Research shows where most of that cost increase came from, and it’s not the pricey OLED screen: 5G added $34 to the bill of materials compared to the 4G-only iPhone 11. In fact, a report from Fomalhaut Techno Solutions and Nikkei estimates Qualcomm’s 5G modem was the single most...

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