Last week, in an exclusive interview with the Wall Street Journal , outgoing Apple CEO Tim Cook warned that the memory chip crunch made price increases “unavoidable.” He also made what seemed like a promise: “We’re willing to use our balance sheet to help be a part of the solution.” So much for that. On Thursday, Apple rammed through hefty price increases for many of its popular devices. Macs , iPads, the Vision Pro, HomePods and Apple TV products all saw price hikes ranging from 15% to over 30% . Even budget-friendly models, like the MacBook Neo and refurbished devices , weren’t exempt, though iPhones and AirPods were spared for now. Surging memory costs and tight supplies have shattered any belief that one of the most successful tech giants would shield its customers from the wrath of RAMageddon . It’s a pattern that’s becoming increasingly common across the consumer electronics industry. Microsoft , Motorola, Samsung and now Apple have all blamed higher component costs — driven largely by artificial intelligence data centers hogging all the available RAM — to jack up price tags for everyday people. That’s not to say that chipflation isn’t real. Smartphones rely on DRAM for short-term memory and NAND flash for long-term storage, both of which are also needed for data centers. As these power-hungry AI warehouses face bottlenecks processing larger, high-bandwidth workloads, chipmakers are racing to increase supply, driving prices higher across the industry. “The unprecedented AI infrastructure growth has changed the semiconductor supply chain, driving insatiable demand,” said Neil Shah , vice president of research at the global technology research firm Counterpoint. “The situation is not bound to be better, at least for the next two years.” Are Big Tech profits a mirage? After months of absorbing higher costs for memory and storage chips, which have quadrupled in price since 2025, Apple says it can no longer absorb the costs. “We have never seen a component price increase this much, this quickly,” a company representative told CNET via email. But with Big Tech sitting on some of the largest cash piles in history while reporting consistently strong profit margins, many loyal customers are pissed they’re being made to foot the bill. Or maybe millions of Americans don’t even notice because they’re too busy scraping their paychecks to cover groceries, rent, insurance and utility bills, after years of tariffs and inflation. On the surface, there’s rarely been a better time to be a major technology company. The Magnificent Seven, a moniker for the most dominant companies in the stock market, includes Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet (Google), Amazon, Nvidia, Meta and Tesla. Their massive market capitalizations have masked the otherwise decrepit state of the “regular” economy outside of Wall Street, which feels to most of us like it’s running on fumes. Chipmaker Nvidia has become the world’s most valuable company, with a record-breaking valuation of $4.7 trillion. SpaceX’s initial public offering , which included AI developer xAI, made Elon Musk the world’s first trillionaire ( for a week or so, at least ). AI developers such as OpenAI, Anthropic and Google have raised millions of dollars in investor funding on the promise that their products will change the world. Despite not being a major player in the AI gold rush (or perhaps because the company took a more cautious approach to AI spending ), Apple maintains industry-leading margins, reporting $112 billion in net income in 2025. For the second quarter of 2026, the company reported 17% revenue growth, beating investor expectations. Except the financial narrative around AI is starting to shift. As Big Tech sheds trillions to finance ever-larger AI server farms — and turns to debt markets to get the cash — it’s facing new skepticism. Consumers aren’t seeing a clear payoff, and investors want tangible returns. AI is increasingly looking like a gigantic money pit. Are price hikes really
Sumber: CNET