Back in September of last year, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reported the possibility of Apple renaming its Pro Max tier of iPhones into a simpler name of Ultra. But now, Gurman says that it’s possible that the fruit company will instead add the tier as a new one in addition to and above the existing Pro Max variant.
According to the newsletter, Gurman claims that this will potentially happen “in time for the 2024 iPhone release”. It’s worth remembering that this is one year later than what was previously claimed. As in, it was the iPhone 15, which is what this year’s batch of iPhones are expected to be called, that would see the Pro Max name be swapped with Ultra.
Naturally, a new tier above the four existing ones would mean that the price ceiling for iPhones will go up again. Though especially in the case of Apple, it is still unclear what would these new Ultra device variants get that would make them worth more than the Pro Max versions. One could argue that these will get more cameras, more RAM, a bigger battery and a larger screen, in addition to other possibilities like stylus support.
The issue with this argument is that, barring the last one, the Pro Max models generally already get more of everything else compared to the more affordable models. In other words, one can also say that with the Pro Max getting demoted to the second tier variant, it will also be getting less than the absolute best. Not to mention the dilution of the iPhone range with there being five different variants in total.
(Source: Blomberg)
