Thanks to the strength of the South African rand, prices of Apple’s iPhone 16 series in that country are lower when compared to the launch prices for the previous-generation models, particularly iPhone 15, TechCentral has reported.
The rand has strengthened against the dollar in the past year. On 13 September 2023, the rand was trading at R18.80/US$. At time of writing this article, $1 cost R17.76 – an improvement of 5.9%.
The iPhone 16 is the first in the series designed specifically with artificial intelligence in mind and will be the first newly released iPhones to feature Apple Intelligence. (The iPhone 15 Pro models will also get Apple Intelligence.)
The cheapest base model iPhone 16 with 128GB of storage costs R20,999, a 4.5% reduction from the iPhone 15’s price at launch. The 256GB and 512GB variants cost R23,999 and R28,999, respectively, and are cheaper by 4% and 4.8%.
The iPhone Plus saw similar drops in pricing between version 15 and 16, with the 128GB iPhone 16 variant going for R23,999, the 256GB for R26,499 and the 512GB at R3,799.
The lowest-specced iPhone 16 Pro, with 128GB of storage, retails for R26,999, down 4.3% from the launch price of the iPhone 15 Pro. The most expensive iPhone 16 Pro variant at R39,999 is 4.8% cheaper than its predecessor.
The price reductions for the Pro Max model, the top of the iPhone range, are all slightly above 5% for all three variants. Both the 128GB and 256GB variants of the Pro Max have declined by 5.1%, with launch prices of R31 799 and R36,999, respectively. The 1TB Pro Max model has fallen in price by 5.6% to R39,999.
The new Apple Watch Series 10 will also go on sale in South Africa on 20 September, with prices starting at R9,899 for the Wi-Fi-only model and R12,399 for the model with integrated eSIM for mobile access.
