“Given the economic conditions, the higher interest rates and the higher costs, it’s going to be increasingly difficult for Australian consumers to afford iPhones like they did in previous years,” he said. Meanwhile, interest in the basic iPhone model has been slowly declining these past few years, in favour of more expensive models, data from the mobile phone comparison site, WhistleOut, shows. In the 12 months prior to the 2021 launch of the iPhone 13, the basic iPhone 12 was Apple’s most popular model among consumers searching for a new phone, accounting for 56 per cent of iPhone 12 searches…