Apple jacks up iCloud prices in South Africa

July 6, 2023 Siyabonga Mtangana

Apple has increased pricing for iCloud in South Africa, despite downward trends in storage costs.

The cost of an iCloud subscription in South Africa has increased by 13% from R45 to R60/month for the 200GB tier.

The 2TB tier, meanwhile, has jumped by 33% — from R150 to R200/month. Pricing for the 50GB tier remains unchanged at R15/month. There’s also a free 5GB plan, which remains free of charge for Apple users.

With no official statement from Apple, users are left to speculate as to the reason for the increases – which have been imposed at similar but varying levels in different countries around the world. However, the rand has depreciated strongly against the dollar and euro in recent months, which may have been one of the contributing factors.

It comes after Apple last October pushed through big prices increases for Apple TV+ and Apple Music, its two streaming services. Those rose by 47% and 16.7% for Apple TV+ and Apple Music, respectively. That was after Apple pushed up the prices for the two services in the US.

Read: Apple is slashing production of its Vision Pro headset

On iCloud, the new pricing makes the service more expensive than Google’s cloud storage offerings. South Africa is not the only market to get a price increase, with iCloud also now costing more in other countries, including the UK, Poland, Romania, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. The 2TB tier is R40/month cheaper on Google than on iCloud, for example. — (c) 2023 NewsCentral Media