Apple CEO Tim Cook said in an exclusive interview with The Wall Street Journal that Apple plans to raise product prices due to surging memory and storage costs driven by AI companies’ soaring demand for DRAM and NAND chips, calling the increase inevitable. Cook declined to reveal the timing, magnitude, or specific product lines affected, but the price hikes could come before the iPhone 18 series launch in September, with Mac and iPad bearing the brunt first — last month Apple already raised the starting price of the Mac mini. TechInsights estimates that if the full additional costs are passed on to consumers, the next-generation iPhone Pro could see a price increase of around $270. Morgan Stanley predicts overall prices for smartphones and personal computers in the U.S. will rise by about 15% this year. Cook also made a rare comment on the supply chain landscape, saying that in the face of skyrocketing memory and storage prices, Apple is willing to examine all supply sources, including Chinese suppliers, but cooperation with the latter must comply with U.S. national security regulations and may require licensing.
Cook described the current memory market as a once-in-a-century flood, saying he has never seen such commodity price volatility in his over 40 years of supply chain experience. The root cause: more and more DRAM production capacity is shifting to high-bandwidth memory required for AI servers. Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron have seen explosive stock price and profit growth over the past 12 months, with Micron and SK Hynix rising over 800%, and Kioxia and SanDisk surging as much as 4,600%. Apple, which has historically leveraged its purchasing scale to squeeze supplier profits, now finds itself having to compete with AI hyperscalers for chip allocation. Cook said Apple is willing to use its balance sheet to address supply issues, but explicitly ruled out building its own memory and storage chip factories — we can’t do everything, we know what we’re good at — a stark contrast to the aggressive strategy of AI companies like Nvidia and Google, which lock in supply with multi-year prepaid contracts.