Apple began selling the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max in several countries on 18 September. Bangladesh was not one of them. The phones are on sale in Dhaka's mobile markets regardless.
What the market is asking
Prothom Alo's survey of Dhaka's shops puts the iPhone 18 Pro at an unofficial Tk1,90,000 (6.3-inch screen, 48MP camera, 12GB RAM, A20 Pro, 256GB, 4,056mAh) and the iPhone 18 Pro Max at Tk2,12,000 (6.9-inch, 5,391mAh).
Officially imported stock sits alongside it: the iPhone 17 Pro Max at Tk2,42,999, the iPhone 17 Air at Tk1,64,999 and the iPhone 17 at Tk1,47,000.
Elsewhere in the market, Google's Pixel 11 Pro is unofficially Tk1,40,000 and the Pixel 11 Tk97,000, against an official Pixel 10 at Tk1,09,999. At the other end, Tecno's Spark 50C is officially Tk23,999 with a 6.78-inch screen, 50MP camera, Helio G81 and a 5,200mAh battery; the Camon Air is Tk44,999 with 6,000mAh.
What it means in Bangladesh
Put the two iPhone columns side by side and the number that matters appears. A newer, unreleased phone bought outside the official channel costs Tk30,999 less than last year's top model bought inside it. That is not a smuggling anecdote; it is a measurement of what the official channel costs the buyer.
Most of that gap is tax and duty, and some of it is the structural cost of being a small market an importer must stock in advance. A grey importer carries a suitcase. An official distributor carries inventory, warranty liability, VAT and a retail network.
Which is exactly why the comparison is not as simple as it looks, and the honest advice runs against the arithmetic. What the Tk30,999 buys is a device with no Bangladeshi warranty, no service centre obligation, and no recourse if the handset fails in month three. Apple's own repair network does not recognise a phone that was never sold here, and the shop that sold it may not exist next year.
There is a second, less visible cost. A grey handset's IMEI may not be registered with the BTRC's database, and the regulator has moved repeatedly — if inconsistently — towards blocking unregistered devices from the network. A phone that works today is not a phone guaranteed to connect next year.
The useful way to read this table is not iPhone-versus-iPhone at all. It is the bottom of it: a Tk23,999 handset with a 5,200mAh battery and a 6.78-inch screen is what the overwhelming majority of Bangladeshi buyers are actually choosing, and the official-versus-unofficial question barely touches that end of the market.
What Apple does with the device after you own it is in the ads-in-Settings story.
