New Delhi — Apple may raise prices across some of its products as surging memory and storage chip costs put pressure on the company’s margins, according to a report.
The increase in component costs has been driven in part by rising demand from artificial intelligence data centers, which has tightened global semiconductor supply chains.
Apple CEO Tim Cook told The Wall Street Journal that the company can no longer fully absorb the sharp rise in component costs and may eventually pass some of the burden on to consumers.
“Unfortunately, price increases are unavoidable,” Cook was quoted as saying.
“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 did not specify when the price increases could take effect, how large they would be or which Apple products would be affected.
The comments come as industry groups representing automakers, retailers and electronics manufacturers warn that rising demand for memory chips could lead to higher consumer prices and supply disruptions.
According to the report, memory and storage components have become a major concern for Apple, particularly in the dynamic random-access memory market. Supplies have tightened as chipmakers shift more production capacity toward high-bandwidth memory used in AI servers.
Cook said more memory supply is being directed toward AI infrastructure, reducing availability for consumer electronics.
“There’s less supply at a time when consumers want devices and the memory guys are passing along huge price increases,” he said.
Cook said memory pricing and supply need to return to more reasonable levels for consumer products.
Earlier in April, Apple announced that John Ternus, senior vice president of hardware engineering, will succeed Cook as chief executive officer on September 1, 2026, concluding a long-running succession process unanimously approved by the board.
Cook will transition to the newly created role of executive chairman, where he will engage with global policymakers and assist with select company matters. (Source: IANS)
