Apple Raises MacBook and iPad Prices Due to Soaring Memory and Storage Costs
L'essentiel
- Apple has increased prices for several MacBook and iPad models, citing an "unprecedented challenge" from soaring memory and storage costs driven by the rapid expansion of AI data centers.
- The announcement led to a more than 6% drop in Apple's shares.
Résumé généré par IA
Pourquoi c'est important
Apple announced price increases on MacBooks and iPads, its first formal move to pass higher memory and storage costs onto consumers after CEO Tim Cook stated such increases were unavoidable due to the AI boom.
Apple on Thursday announced price hikes on MacBooks and iPads, its first formal move to pass higher memory and storage costs on to consumers after CEO Tim Cook said increases had become unavoidable.
Shares of the company sank more than 6% on Thursday after the price change, the worst fall since April 2025.
MacBook Neo entry $599 increasing to $699
MacBook Air 512GB $1099 increasing to $1299
MacBook Pro 1T $1699 increasing to $1999
iPad Air 128GB $599 increasing to $749
iPad Pro Wifi 256GB $999 increasing to $1199
Apple's online store briefly went down Thursday morning and updated with the price changes.
"The consumer electronics industry is facing an unprecedented challenge," the company said in a statement. "The rapid expansion of AI data centers has created an extraordinary surge in demand for memory and storage. We have never seen a component price increase this much, this quickly."
Apple added that it has "reached a point where we need to begin raising prices on a number of products," leaving the door open to more increases down the line.
"We know this is not welcome news, and we are working tirelessly to find solutions," the company said.
Cook told The Wall Street Journal last week that Apple could no longer fully shield customers from a spike in component costs tied to the artificial intelligence boom.
"This is a hundred-year flood," Cook told the Journal. "I've never seen anything like it in any area in over 40 years."
Memory and storage prices have quadrupled in the past three quarters, according to Counterpoint Research, as suppliers steer more production toward the high-bandwidth memory used in AI servers.
The memory crisis has been a major boon for suppliers like Micron , which just reported a quadrupling in revenue and said its gross margin jumped from 39% a year ago to 84.9% in the most recent quarter, surpassing Nvidia and Meta .
Apple's pricing playbook has historically involved removing the lowest-cost option, making higher storage or memory the new starting point, or steering buyers toward Pro models and higher-capacity versions.
The Mac mini offered an early sign of that approach. In May, Apple stopped selling the lowest-priced configuration, removing the $599, 256GB option from its lineup. The remaining entry model started at $799. Apple has also long used storage upgrades to lift the price consumers pay for its devices.
Tarun Pathak, research director at Counterpoint Research, estimates the higher cost of components could add roughly $200 per iPhone for Apple. He expects price increases of about $150 to $200 across the lineup, weighed more heavily toward higher-memory configurations than base models.
À surveiller
Perspective IA — des possibilités, pas des certitudes
Apple will implement price increases of about $150 to $200 across the iPhone lineup.
Probable · En quelques mois
Questions ouvertes
- Will Apple implement further price increases on other products?
- How will these price hikes affect Apple's sales volume?
- What solutions is Apple working on to mitigate component costs?
