iPhone price shocker in South Africa

Apple launched the iPhone 16 lineup in September 2024, and buying the base iPhone 16 costs roughly 74% of the average South African employee’s monthly salary.
The most notable change over the previous generation iPhone is the addition of a dedicated camera control button, featured on all variations of the iPhone 16.
The company said the new iPhones were designed with Apple Intelligence as a core priority.
“It puts powerful generative models right at the core of your iPhone,” said Apple CEO Tim Cook.
“The next generation of iPhone has been designed for Apple Intelligence from the ground up.”
The base iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus pack Apple’s in-house A18 chip, which has a 16-core neural engine, while the higher-specced Pro and Pro Max get Apple’s A18 Pro SoC.
The A18 Pro has a 16-core neural engine capable of 35 trillion operations per second, a 6-core CPU, and a 6-core GPU.
The new chips have a slew of AI features, and the company said some of these features will be available to devices with older chips.
These include text and image generation, writing tools, and a range of new Siri functionalities.
Regarding the latter, the voice assistant now has a better understanding of language, enabling it to understand prompts even when the speaker stumbles over words.
Another notable Apple Intelligence feature is Visual Intelligence, which lets users use the Camera Control button to learn more about items, events, and landmarks.
Users can click and hold the Camera Control button to pull up detailed information about the object in the image.
“All of this is done privately using a combination of on-device intelligence and Apple service that never store your images,” said Apple.
The base model iPhone 16 launched in South Africa with a starting price of R20,999.

MyBroadband compared base iPhone launch prices from 2010 to 2024 as a proportion of the average monthly salary in those years. We used salary data from Statistics South Africa’s Quarterly Employment Statistics.
The iPhone 5c, launched in 2013, arguably had the best launch price of all the base iPhones launched in the past 15 years.
The smartphone launched at a price of R8,499, at a time when South Africa’s average monthly salary was R14,785. Therefore, the device cost roughly 57% of the monthly average wage in 2013.
The proportion had hovered around 59% in the years before, but the iPhone 5c is the lowest in the past 15 years.
However, Apple launched the iPhone 6 in the following year at a price of R12,500.
While the average monthly salary had increased to R15,770, the R4,000 price increase meant the iPhone 6 cost nearly 80% of the average South African employee’s monthly salary.
The proportion has been relatively high since, ranging from 62.36% to 82.96% between 2015 and 2024.
The iPhone 7, launched in 2016, cost roughly 81% of the average monthly salary in South Africa.
The iPhone 8’s launch came the following year, with a starting price of R13,499. The smartphone cost roughly 69% of the average monthly salary in 2017, which was R19,608.
Apple launched the iPhone 14 in 2022, and its local launch price was a bit of a shocker. At R20,599 the iPhone 14 cost nearly 83% of the average monthly salary in South Africa.
The average monthly salary at the end of 2022 was R24,831.
The iPhone 15, launched in 2023, wasn’t much better. It cost R21,999 at launch in South Africa, nearly 82% of the country’s average monthly salary of R26,894.
Apple’s iPhone 16 may have provided some relief for South African iPhone fans. Its launch price of R20,999 costs nearly 74.5% of the average South African salary — a marked reduction over the two years before.
The table below compares the South African launch prices of flagship iPhones from 2010 to 2024 as a proportion of the average salary in those years.
Year and model | Launch price | Average salary in South Africa | iPhone price as a percentrage of salary |
---|---|---|---|
2010 — iPhone 4 | R6,999 | R11,825 | 59.19% |
2011 — iPhone 4s | R7,699 | R13,005 | 59.20% |
2012 — iPhone 5 | R8,299 | R13,960 | 59.45% |
2013 — iPhone 5c | R8,499 | R14,785 | 57.48% |
2014 — iPhone 6 | R12,500 | R15,770 | 79.26% |
2015 — iPhone 6s | R11,799 | R17,387 | 67.86% |
2016 — iPhone 7 | R14,669 | R18,104 | 81.03% |
2017 — iPhone 8 | R13,499 | R19,608 | 68.84% |
2018 — iPhone XR | R15,999 | R20,860 | 76.70% |
2019 — iPhone 11 | R14,999 | R21,966 | 68.28% |
2020 — iPhone 12 Mini | R15,999 | R22,579 | 70.86% |
2021 — iPhone 13 Mini | R14,999 | R24,051 | 62.36% |
2022 — iPhone 14 | R20,599 | R24,831 | 82.96% |
2023 — iPhone 15 | R21,999 | R26,894 | 81.80% |
2024 — iPhone 16 | R20,999 | R28,220 | 74.41% |