Apple Signals Price Hikes Amid Memory Chip Shortage

Apple plans to raise prices on its products to offset rising memory and storage chip costs, Chief Executive Tim Cook told The Wall Street Journal in an interview published June 17, 2026. "Unfortunately, price increases are unavoidable," Cook said, per The Wall Street Journal. Cook added: "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 declined to specify when price increases would take effect, how large they would be, or which products they would include.

Cook described the supply shock as "a hundred-year flood," telling Reuters he has never seen anything like it in over 40 years in the industry. He said Apple is "willing to use our balance sheet to help be a part of the solution" but confirmed Apple has no plans to build its own memory or storage factories.

This interview is one of Cook's last major public statements as Apple CEO. Apple announced in April 2026 that Cook will become executive chairman and hand the chief executive role to John Ternus, Apple's senior vice president of hardware engineering, effective September 1, 2026.

According to The Wall Street Journal, memory and storage chip prices have quadrupled over the past year, a surge the report links to AI data-center demand diverting supply toward high-bandwidth memory (HBM) used in AI servers. Memory suppliers have been prioritizing HBM and premium DRAM under long-term agreements with AI infrastructure buyers, reducing supply available for consumer devices and pushing spot and contract pricing higher. Apple also needs to increase DRAM in its devices to support new on-device AI features, compounding the procurement pressure.

Industry coverage frames this as a supply-chain effect from the broader AI buildout rather than an Apple-specific procurement failure. TechCrunch cited a TechInsights estimate that maintaining Apple margins intact could require adding approximately $270 to a next-generation iPhone Pro. Tech outlets including TechCrunch and 9to5Mac noted the timing overlap with Apple's expected September device launch window, which is widely reported to include a foldable iPhone model, creating near-term tension between launch pricing and component costs.

Monitor DRAM and NAND contract and spot-price indices over the next 60 to 90 days, supplier announcements from major memory vendors on capacity or allocation prioritization, and Apple's September product launch pricing. Also track memory-allocation commentary in upcoming earnings calls from chip suppliers, which will indicate whether the consumer-versus-server allocation shift is stabilizing or continuing.