iStore, South Africa's largest Apple Premium Distributor, plans to open more stores focused on pre-owned devices before the end of 2026, with more to follow. Chief executive Chris Dodd told the Sunday Times the outlets will sit in regional shopping centres outside the major metros, closer to where customers live. iStore has 42 stores nationally, and the Northern Cape is the only province without one.

The move follows a sharp rise in what a new iPhone costs. Launch prices went from R6,389 for the iPhone 3G in 2008 to R20,799 for the iPhone 17 last year. The iPhone 18 Pro now starts at R28,799 for 256GB and runs to R57,699 for the 2TB model.

Apple raised prices on Macs, iPads and Vision Pro headsets in June, blaming the surge in memory and storage demand from AI data centres, and said it had never seen component prices rise so far, so fast.

Storage is now visibly expensive in the trade-in numbers too. A 512GB iPhone 17 earns R4,100 more on trade-in than the 256GB version. iStore accepts devices as old as the 2019 iPhone 11, with an iPhone 11 Pro worth between R4,700 and R5,500 towards an iPhone 18 Pro Max, and up to R25,000 off for a perfect 2TB iPhone 17 Pro Max. Dodd describes the strategy as reaching customers across different income levels and different points in the upgrade cycle.

MyBroadband reported the plans and the trade-in pricing. The Sunday Times first carried Dodd's comments on the expansion. Pre-owned Apple is not new to South African buyers: Digicape already sells certified pre-owned iPhones online with a two-year warranty, and Computer Mania's Gomaxx and Cellucity also sell used devices, as MyBroadband compared in 2024.

What iStore is building is a closed loop. Every trade-in at a metro store is stock for a regional pre-owned store, bought back at a price iStore sets and sold again with its brand on it. That is a better business than it looks, because the same phone earns margin twice and the customer who could not afford R28,799 new is still buying Apple rather than switching to Android.

Physical stores matter for this particular product, since a used phone is the one purchase people most want to hold before paying for, and online sellers already cover the buyer who is comfortable doing it remotely.

The regional focus is the sharpest part. It targets the market that contract pricing has pushed out, and the same buyer device financing firms are chasing from the other side. The handset has become the barrier, and there are now several companies competing to lower it.

You might also like our piece on SA phone contract prices rising twice as fast as the phones, Yellow's Series C for smartphone financing, and Apple building game controllers under Beats.

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