Apple to Raise Prices, Citing Unsustainable RAM Costs

Apple has confirmed that price hikes are on the horizon, driven by what CEO Tim Cook describes as an unsustainable surge in memory costs. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Cook acknowledged that “price increases are unavoidable” as the company grapples with the ongoing RAM shortage affecting the entire tech industry.

“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 explained. The executive did not specify exactly when the new pricing will take effect or which products will see the largest jumps.

The writing has been on the wall for some time. Earlier this year, Apple quietly stopped selling the Mac Studio with 512GB of RAM, and it raised the starting price of the Mac Mini to $799 after eliminating the more affordable $599 configuration. Analyst Tim Culpan has also speculated that Apple could discontinue the base version of the MacBook Neo, keeping only the $699 model with 512GB of storage.

The root cause of the problem lies in the booming AI industry. As companies race to build massive data centers, their insatiable demand for memory chips is overwhelming suppliers. This shortage has pushed up costs for RAM and storage, triggering price increases not just for Apple, but across the board for game consoles, laptops, and other consumer electronics.

“There’s less supply at a time when consumers want devices and the memory guys are passing along huge price increases,” Cook told the WSJ. He added that the industry “definitely needs memory pricing and supply to return to reasonable levels for consumer products.”

Apple is preparing to unveil its next-generation iPhones later this year, but it remains unclear how deeply the memory crunch will cut into pricing. The WSJ estimates that the upcoming iPhone 18 Pro could cost $1,299, a significant leap from the $1,099 price tag of the iPhone 17 Pro.