Apple should increase prices due to rising chip costs, says newspaper

Models of the iPhone 17 line at an Apple store in Taiwan, in a photo from September 19, 2025
Reuters/Ann Wang
Apple plans to increase the prices of its products due to the increase in memory chip costs. The statement was made by the company's CEO, Tim Cook, to the Wall Street Journal.
"Unfortunately, price increases are inevitable," said Cook. "We are doing everything we can to mitigate the huge increases that are being passed on to us and trying to protect our customers from these increases, but the situation has become unsustainable."
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The executive did not give details about when the price increase will be applied nor which products will be affected.
The company is expected to launch the iPhone 18 in September and present the first foldable model in the line, according to the WSJ. But the report indicated that the price increase could arrive even earlier, for Mac and iPad models.
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The price of the iPhone 18 Pro would rise from US$1,099 to US$1,299 if the manufacturer decides to maintain its profit margin, according to a projection by consultancy TechInsights made to the Wall Street Journal.
The supply of memory chips has been decreasing as manufacturers direct their investments towards the production of more advanced chips, aimed at artificial intelligence data centers.
Cook said storage chips are also a problem, but it's the RAM chips that cause the most concern.
RAM chips (an acronym for "random access memory") temporarily store the data used by a device. When an application is opened on the cell phone, it is the RAM that maintains the information necessary for the program to run correctly.
Although it is more associated with cell phones and computers, memory chips are also present in smart TVs, tablets, video game consoles, smart watches, robot vacuum cleaners, cars, printers, among others.
The Apple CEO also said that consumers want to buy cell phones and other devices, but "memory manufacturers are passing on exorbitant price increases". And he stated that he has not yet seen an increase in raw material prices like this.
"This is a flood that happens once every hundred years," he stated. "We undoubtedly need prices and memory supply to return to reasonable levels for consumer products. This is the fundamental issue."
The smartphone market is expected to record the biggest drop in history in 2026, said consultancy IDC, in a projection released in February. The expectation is that manufacturers will sell 1.1 billion units worldwide this year, 12.9% less than in 2025.
At the time, the consultancy also stated that the situation is not expected to improve until mid-2027. And it projected that, in 2027, sales will grow just 2% and, in 2028, they will recover, with an increase of 5.2%.

Source: G1