We are in the midst of “RAMageddon.” The RAM memory crisis continues to impact the industry, and Apple knows it well. The company had weathered the storm (relatively) until now, but its current CEO, Tim Cook, is already warning customers: your next Mac, iPhone or iPad could go up in price very soon. Few surprises, many disappointments.
The situation is “unsustainable”. The head of Apple granted an interview in The Wall Street Journal in which he noted that price increases are “inevitable.” The company has made great efforts to absorb the impact of the increase in costs in all types of RAM and NAND memory chips, but the limit seems to have already been exceeded, because Cook stated that the situation has become “unsustainable.”
Apple prices will rise. Apple has not specified which products will be affected and to what extent, but it already warns that there will be changes to the catalog. cook already warned in April, during the conference with investors, that the shortage would end up taking its toll on them. The future CEO, John Ternus, explained the same shortly after. He who warns is not a traitor, they seemed to want to say.
The iPhone, a firm candidate to increase in price. According to industry experts cited in the Financial Times, if Apple raises prices, one of the clear candidates to see that price growth is the iPhone. The company is expected to announce new iPhones in September, which will give the opportunity for these new models to have a significantly higher price than the traditional one from launch.
Source: TechInsights
How much more expensive? What is not clear is how much more expensive both the iPhone and the company’s other hardware products will be. In The Wall Street Journal they cite estimates from the company TechInsights, which believes that the new iPhones will have a price that will be at least $270 more expensive so that Apple can maintain its profit margin. The iPhone 17 Pro starts at $1,099, and therefore now the price would be close to $1,400.
The situation is tragic. Data from TechInsights (in the graph above) reveals how price increases in both RAM and NAND chips in our SSDs have risen in price astronomically since mid-2025. It is estimated that RAM will do so even more in the next 12 months, although it seems that the situation will relax for NAND memories.
And the manufacturers make their fortune. Meanwhile, the companies that dominate the memory market continue to do their own thing. Samsung, SK Hynix, Micron, Kioxia and SanDisk have managed to grow astronomically on the stock market (the latter two, 4,600% in the last twelve months) and have no intention of drastically increasing their production. There are plans for new production plants, yes, but almost all of them to produce HBM memory chips for AI. Meanwhile, wafers with memory chips for devices for end users will continue to be 15% below demand, they estimate at Morgan Stanley.
AI is costing Apple. At the moment AI is not favoring Apple. Their strategy with this technology has been highly criticized and only now have they just launched the new Siri AI thanks to the agreement with Google. It does not seem that this is going to be a sufficient argument to accelerate iPhone sales, especially if they rise in price. It certainly has not been the case in the Android world, let alone the PC and laptop segment: the Copilot+ PCs never managed to catch on after promise a revolution that never happened.
Image | European Commission (Christophe Licoppe), Arne Müseler
In Xataka | The RAM crisis is so extreme that it has achieved what seemed unthinkable: Apple’s memories are “cheap”
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