While the latest report from Taiwanese industry analyst Trendforce contains great news about the iPhone 13's rumored battery life compared to the current generation's weak performance, there are also encouraging words about the expected price of Apple's next handset.

"In terms of retail pricing, we expect the iPhone 13 series to remain similar to the iPhone 12 series, assuming Apple can effectively control manufacturing costs since the latest models do not involve significant hardware upgrades.

"Similar" tends to be replaced by "identical" in these types of projections. This is because firms prefer round numbers, and a jump to the next level would probably no longer be described as "similar." In other words, the pricing will look like this:

(There are rumors that the first 1TB model may appear in this generation. However, Trendforce - the analyst currently making this claim - disputes this, so we will leave it out for now).

If these numbers turn out to be accurate, perhaps more interesting is what the fixed price will do to existing iPhones on sale. Apple will not be able to continue selling the iPhone 12 at its current price if the iPhone 13 displaces the iPhone 12. If the current iPhone 11 pricing is the standard, we can expect the iPhone 12 to start at $599. That could in turn have a knock-on effect and cause the iPhone 11 to take away the iPhone XR's current $499 price.

There is a lot of speculation here, but it may all be moot anyway. If the ongoing global chip shortage affects Apple in the same way that all other companies are being hit, the inventory shortage could mean a field day for duffers. eBay vendors are already taking advantage of the PS5 inventory shortage and raising their prices enormously, and the iPhone 13 is already being sold at a price that is much lower than the iPhone 13, iPhone 13 could suffer the same fate regardless of Apple's intended pricing.

The company has previously told investors that there will be "supply constraints in the September quarter" that will "primarily affect the iPhone and iPad."

Nevertheless, Apple has certain guarantees against such external factors because it manufactures its own chips, and Tim Cook has stated that the aforementioned supply constraints are primarily for "legacy nodes" rather than its own silicon.

This reassurance was of course given before the gas contamination hit Apple's production lines. Whether or not this particular incident had a serious impact on Apple's production output, and some have suggested that it did not, it is a timely reminder that manufacturing chips in-house may solve one problem, but leaves one vulnerable to a series of other problems .