<\/p>\n
Apple Inc’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Tim Cook<\/a> on Wednesday (local time) announced that the company will raise prices on its products to offset soaring costs of memory and storage chips.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Cook told The Wall Street Journal<\/i>, “Unfortunately, price increases are unavoidable. We\u2019re doing our best to mitigate the huge increases that are being passed to us, and we\u2019ve been trying to shield our customers from the increases, but the situation has become unsustainable.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Cook, however, did not offer details on the timing or scale of the planned price surge, nor which products would see a price jump. The company’s next major product launch is expected in September, when it unveils the iPhone 18 lineup, which is also likely to include a new foldable iPhone<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n According to the report, Apple could introduce price increases, especially for Macs and iPads<\/a>, very soon. Last month, in between launch events, the company raised the initial price of the Mac Mini.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The Apple<\/a> CEO said that prices for both memory and storage pose an issue for the company; although he focused on the DRAM market in particular and called out rising allocations going to so-called high-bandwidth memory, used for artificial intelligence<\/a> (AI) servers.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n He said, “There\u2019s less supply at a time when consumers want devices and the memory guys are passing along huge price increases,\u201d and added, “We definitely need memory pricing and supply to return to reasonable levels for consumer products. That\u2019s the bottom line.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The demand for memory <\/a>and storage chips has suddenly skyrocketed from AI companies, driving prices so high that the iPhone maker would have to raise its product prices substantially to maintain its profit margins. Research firm TechInsights estimated that passing the higher cost on to consumers while maintaining the company’s profit margin could roughly add $270 to the price of the next iPhone<\/a> Pro model.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Since 2025, when major tech firms, including Google, Microsoft<\/a>, Meta and Amazon, started announcing massive increases in their capital spending budgets, the cost of memory and storage chips has jumped by 4x. TechInsights anticipates that both prices will continue increasing into 2027.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Cook, who has worked in electronic supply chains throughout his career, including stints at IBM and Compaq before joining Apple, said he has never experienced such a massive spike in prices and called it a “hundred-year flood.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\nMemory and storage prices both issues for Apple: Cook<\/h2>\n
Memory and storage chips demand skyrockets<\/h2>\n
China houses major domestic memory and storage manufacturers<\/h2>\n