Apple was, until recently, the last bastion of price stability even as a tsunami of memory-induced price hikes have continued to sweep across wide swathes of the global consumer electronics sphere. Alas! No longer.
Apple now appears to have surrendered to the inevitable price hikes after trying to swim against the tide for a few quarters.
Apple's Tim Cook had warned that the June-ending quarter would see a "substantial" increase in memory costs, and now the company appears to be capitulating to the inevitable price hikes
Apple's Tim Cook has just declared to the Wall Street Journal that price increase have now become "unavoidable," going on to note:
"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."
This suggests that the upcoming iPhone 18 lineup is now guaranteed to see price hikes, especially the base iPhone 18, which is slated for an upgrade to a 12GB RAM so that Apple's latest on-device AI models are able to work across the entire series.
Of course, while announcing Apple's earnings for the March-ending quarter, Cook had warned that he expected a "substantial" increase in memory costs in the June quarter. He had then gone on to note:
"I can tell you that beyond the June quarter, we believe memory costs will drive an increasing impact on our business, and we'll continue to evaluate this. And as we've said before, we'll look at a range of options."
Do note that there were increasing signs of stress on Apple's product lineup in recent weeks. Back in May, Apple pulled the base variant of the Apple Mac mini, which sported the M4 chip, 16GB RAM, 256GB of storage, and a retail price of $599, from its configurator in the US and other key global markets.
Then, Apple pulled the 256GB option from the M3 Ultra Mac Studio configurator, leaving the 96GB memory configuration as the sole option.
After all, as we had noted at the time, a single 256GB unified memory pool is sufficient for around 10 M5 Pro-based 24GB MacBook Pro devices, which also entail higher margins cumulatively vs. a single Mac Studio device.
Now that Apple has also bowed to the memory overlords, the ongoing AI-induced mayhem has finally reached its peak disruptive phase for the global consumer electronics sphere.
About the author: Writing is my one incontrovertible passion. Over the past six years, he has authored over 2,200 distinct articles on financial and tech-related topics, spanning nearly 1 million words. And he has been a member of Wcctech mobile team since 2025. As an alumnus of the University of Toronto, Rotman Commerce Program, I bring nuance, in-depth knowledge, and a unique perspective to every topic that I cover. When I'm not writing, I'm traveling the world, exploring hidden confectionaries and restaurants as an aspiring food connoisseur.
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