Apple is preparing to raise the price of its products to absorb the soaring cost of memory and storage chips, chief executive Tim Cook has confirmed in an interview with The Wall Street Journal, in the clearest signal yet that the artificial-intelligence boom is now landing squarely in the consumer’s pocket.
“Unfortunately, price increases are unavoidable,” Cook told the newspaper. “We’re doing our best to mitigate the huge increases that are being passed to us, and we’ve been trying to shield our customers from the increases, but the situation has become unsustainable.”
Cook declined to specify when the rises would take effect, how large they might be, or which products would carry them. Apple’s next significant launch is expected in September, when the iPhone 18 range, tipped to include the company’s first foldable handset, is due to arrive. Price changes on Macs and iPads could come sooner. The group quietly lifted the starting price of the Mac Mini last month, between launch events.
The trigger is an extraordinary surge in demand for memory and storage chips from AI companies, which has pushed component costs up so sharply that Apple would have to raise device prices substantially simply to hold its margins steady. The research firm TechInsights estimates that passing the higher costs straight through to buyers, while protecting profitability, would add roughly $270 to the price of the next iPhone Pro.
Memory and storage chips sit inside almost every computing device, from smartphones and laptops to games consoles, medical equipment and cars. The problem is that AI servers are now consuming these chips in rapidly rising volumes, leaving even a company as cash-rich as Apple struggling to secure supply. As the company found with Trump-era tariffs that threatened to push iPhone prices sharply higher, external cost shocks have a habit of finding their way onto the shelf price.
Support authors and subscribe to content
This is premium stuff. Subscribe to read the entire article.
