- Apple's CEO has warned of "significantly higher memory costs"
- From June, we're told the cost of RAM will "drive an increasing impact" on Apple's Macs
- Samsung has also warned on the memory crisis, and that "significant shortages" will continue through 2027 at the very least
Apple is warning on the impact of increasingly expensive RAM with its products, and a major memory chip maker has also contributed to the gloomy news when it comes to RAM supply and pricing.
MacRumors reports that Apple just had its quarterly earnings call and CEO Tim Cook observed that memory costs rose during the March quarter (Q2 of its fiscal year). Moreover, Cook said that in the next (June) quarter, Apple is anticipating "significantly higher memory costs" and that from June 2026, the cost of RAM will "drive an increasing impact" on Apple's products.
Sounds ominous, doesn't it? Part of the problem is that Apple's substantial stock of RAM that it had built up — paid for in the past when prices were still at more normal levels — is starting to run dry, so naturally, something will have to give regarding pricing.
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Quite what, we don't know, and all the CEO would be drawn to say is that Apple is exploring a "range of options" for dealing with potential prices hikes due to having to pay more (much more, no doubt) for RAM.
9 to 5 Mac further chipped in to observe that Cook also commented on the stock issues with two of Apple's Macs that have been seen of late. The CEO said: "On the Mac mini and the Mac Studio, both of these are amazing platforms for AI and agentic tools, and the customer recognition of that is happening faster than what we had predicted, and so we saw higher than expected demand."
This is down to the popularity of running local AIs on a device which has lots of memory such as the beefier configurations of those Macs (driven by the success of AI agent OpenClaw).
Cook also noted that demand for the new MacBook Neo has been "off the charts", and that for all these Macs, it may take Apple a few months to address the shortfall in supply.
Elsewhere away from Apple, Tom's Hardware noticed that Samsung, one of the big memory chip makers, just released its own earnings report, with executive VP Kim Jaejune warning that "significant shortages" across its memory products are expected to persist through at least 2027 (meaning until 2028). We're told demand fulfillment rates are now at record lows, meaning Samsung is struggling to fulfill the level of demand like never before.
Analysis: treacherous waters ahead
Samsung isn't alone in ringing the memory alarm bells, because one of the other three big chip makers in this arena, SK Hynix, warned in March that the RAM crisis is going to be a long haul – possibly making its effects being felt as far into the future as 2030. Whichever way you look at it, there are cautions that the RAM crisis will continue until 2028 or maybe longer. Only the third major player in terms of memory manufacturers, Micron, hasn't issued a warning yet.
Apple's plight obviously reinforces this messaging, and it'll be interesting to see what kind of 'options' Tim Cook is mulling over in terms of combating the lack of RAM supply and avoiding having to jack up prices on its Macs. Clearly Apple does have a lot of weight to throw around in terms of getting the best prices out of the supply chain, but at this point I'd imagine there's little room to maneuver with contract negotiations even for the tech giants of the world.
Then again, having set out the stall of the MacBook Neo as a truly affordable laptop, Apple can't exactly backtrack and hike prices on that particular offering, so it seems like these could be tricky waters to navigate for Captain Cook — or more to the point, Captain Ternus, as it'll soon be. It's an interesting time to be taking control of Apple, that's for sure.
Some denizens of Reddit are certainly bracing for the worst, namely Mac price hikes. As the most upvoted comment on this thread in the Apple subreddit stated: "Oh come now, we all know how Apple plans to 'deal with the problem'. No one needs the CEO to spell out the price increases that Apple will be doing in the not too distant future."
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