Ming-Chi Kuo report: 6.5" OLED iPhone should cost ~$1K and come in three colors; 6.1" LCD model should cost ~$700 and come in five colors including blue and red
Ming-Chi Kuo released a report today that ups his estimates for the new 2018 iPhone sales, as well as detailing a few changes to expect.
Context & Ripple Effects
Kuo's July update firms up the three-model plan he first laid out in November, when KGI reported Apple would extend the iPhone X form factor across a 6.5-inch OLED, 5.8-inch OLED, and 6.1-inch LCD trio. What's new today is the pricing and color split: the big OLED lands around $1,000 in three colors, while the LCD model comes in near $700 with five colors including blue and red.
That $700 figure tightens his earlier range — back in January he pegged the 6.1-inch model at $700-$800 with a single camera, aluminum frame, and no 3D Touch — and the economics behind the gap are familiar from his September display-cost note, which had Samsung-made OLED at $120-$130 per panel against $45-$55 for LCD. Color count becomes the visible tell of which supply chain each model rides.
First-order effects
- Apple's late-2018 lineup now has a de facto two-tier structure: a ~$1,000 flagship OLED tier limited to three finishes and a ~$700 LCD tier dressed up in five colors, making the cheaper model the volume play.
- The five-color treatment signals Apple positioning the 6.1-inch LCD as the mass-market successor to the colorful non-X iPhones rather than a stripped-down X, protecting the OLED models' premium framing.
Second-order effects
- Samsung's OLED panel business keeps its high-margin Apple slot concentrated in the two OLED models, while the LCD model routes volume to the cheaper display chain — a split that caps how much of Apple's bill of materials flows to OLED suppliers.
- A full iPhone X look at ~$700 pressures the pricing of any remaining notched-design-free models in Apple's own lineup and forces Android rivals selling X-style designs above that price to justify the gap.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, Apple's annual cycle settles into permanent stratification by display technology and finish count rather than by size alone, with the $1,000 ceiling established as the normal flagship anchor point.
- The wider the spec gap between the $700 and $1,000 tiers, the more Apple risks its own cheap model absorbing demand that would have gone to the OLED flagships — a cannibalization tradeoff it appears willing to accept for volume.
The trend: Apple is turning the iPhone X design into a multi-year product family, using display technology and color counts to stratify one industrial design across a ~$700-to-$1,000 price ladder.