Due to rumors spreading that the iPhone 18 will come with a high price tag, the iPhone 17 is being sold at a high price in Dubai.

While it is generally expected that the prices of older iPhone models will drop as a new Apple iPhone model is about to be released to the market, mobile phone vendors in Dubai's Deira market point out that this is not always the case. According to them, there is a trend for prices of older models to increase in some instances a few weeks before a new phone is released.

The main reason for this is that consumers are inclined to buy the currently available model without waiting for the new model. This limits stock in the market and creates high demand.

The aforementioned situation has been well established due to recent reports that the upcoming iPhone 18 model could be more expensive in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). As a result, the prices of several iPhone 17 models in the local market have already increased by AED 200 to 300. According to Mr. Moideen Musthafa of 'Phoneline' in Deira, the iPhone 17 Pro model, which was sold for approximately AED 4,700 a few days ago, has now risen to AED 4,900, and if demand continues, it could exceed the AED 5,100 mark.

Furthermore, a used iPhone 17 Pro model is currently selling for approximately AED 4,200, and an iPhone 16 Pro Max model with 256 GB capacity can be purchased for around AED 4,000. With increasing demand, the prices of these used phones are also expected to rise in the future. Particularly, there is currently the highest demand for the iPhone 17 Pro model, and vendors state that there was a shortage of some phone units in recent days. They recall that similar high demand existed before the release of iPhone 6, iPhone X, iPhone 12, and iPhone 17.

However, a completely different situation was observed before the introduction of iPhone 11 and iPhone 13 models, where vendors sold off their old stock to make way for new models, causing prices of both new and old phones to gradually decrease. Mr. Ashraf, another vendor in Deira, states that the nature of the market changes every year. Sometimes, prices of older models drop because consumers wait for the new model to be released, but at other times, prices increase because they are prompted to quickly buy the existing model due to fear that the next model will be more expensive. He further believes that this strong demand for the iPhone 17 Pro Max will continue until the iPhone 18 is released in September, and this could lead to a shortage of some popular models.