Apple has acknowledged that the prices of its products will increase in the future due to continued memory supply constraints. Apple CEO Tim Cook delivered the bad news in an interview with the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday.
Cook cited continued RAM shortages as the reason the price increase is “inevitable.” From a WSJ article published today:
“Unfortunately, price increases are inevitable,” he said. “While we are doing everything in our power to mitigate the significant price increases and have sought to protect our customers from price increases, the situation has become unsustainable.”
Cook did not provide details about the timing or size of the planned price increases or which products would be affected. Apple’s next major product announcement is likely to be the iPhone 18 lineup in September, which is also expected to include a new foldable iPhone.
Price increases, especially for Macs and iPads, could happen sooner. Apple increased the starting price of the Mac Mini between launch events last month.
As the Journal points out, Apple recently increased the starting price of its Mac mini desktop computers. We did this by removing the basic storage option from our lineup. The price of a Mac mini with more storage is technically the same.
However, going forward, Apple appears to be planning to raise the starting prices of its hardware products even more significantly. At least that seems to be the message from the Journal’s interview excerpts.
Here are the details of the article published today:
Cook said memory and storage prices are both an issue for the company, but he specifically focused on the DRAM market, pointing to increased allocations to so-called high-bandwidth memory used for AI servers.
“Consumers want these devices, supplies are low, and memory manufacturers are raising prices significantly,” Cook said. “We definitely need memory pricing and supply to get consumer products back to a reasonable level. That’s the bottom line.”
Cook delivered his message just months before stepping down as CEO. John Tarnas will become Apple’s CEO on September 1st. Mr. Cook will become Chairman of the Board.
Apple’s planned price increases to address RAM costs come after the company announced its most affordable Mac notebook to date, the MacBook Neo. This inexpensive laptop only has 8GB of RAM, which is less than many iPhones, iPads, and other modern Macs. Customers considering a high-end MacBook Pro may want to lock in the current price.
The article does not say when Apple plans to raise the prices of its products or if there will be price changes for existing products. You can read the full text here.
(Tag Translation)Mac
