Apple is hiking the prices of MacBooks and iPads due to the memory chip shortage - Scripps News

Apple has raised prices on several of its popular products, including MacBooks and iPads, due to rising costs of memory and storage chips driven by the surge in AI data centers. The company cited an u... Read original →

The insatiable demand from AI data centers for high-bandwidth memory is dragging consumer electronics into a cost vortex. Apple’s price hikes on MacBooks and iPads reveal its limited bargaining power in the DRAM/NAND supply chain—especially as TSMC (Taiwan, China) prioritizes NVIDIA’s 3nm AI chips over storage components. Technologically, EUV tool allocation increasingly favors AI logic dies, starving embedded memory nodes of capacity. On the compliance front, U.S. CHIPS Act subsidies focus narrowly on advanced logic fabs, neglecting mature-node memory expansion, worsening structural shortages. Samsung and SK Hynix may ration non-AI customer allocations, pressuring Dell and Lenovo to follow with price increases. Over the next 18 months, memory could consume over 25% of consumer device BOM costs. Apple’s decision to hold iPhone pricing steady—while raising iPad/Mac prices—is a strategic sacrifice of lower-margin segments to protect its premium smartphone franchise. The AI-driven chip inflation has now fully spilled from server racks into consumer wallets.