harder

With the launch of iPhone 17e and of macbook neoit seemed that Apple was one of the few untouchable companies due to the component crisis that we are experiencing. Although prices increased in the United States, they remained the same in Spain and the MacBook neo was launched at a price to eat the market. The problem is that time has shown that not even Apple is untouchable. And Tim Cook affirms that the worst is yet to come. The Mac Mini. This was, along with the MacBook neo, one of the best options when buying a computer. Not from Apple: in general. An interesting price for a team with enormous potential in a very small size. It had one drawback: it started with 256 GB of storage for a price of 719 euros, but it was interesting because using Thunderbolt you could expand with external SSDs. Now, that basic option does not exist. Apple has deleted the ‘cheap’ Mac Mini and now we can only buy the device with 512 GB base at a price of 969 euros. This is a mandatory price increase that suggests that the 256 GB option was the best-seller and Apple ran out of stock. Cushioning the blow. This price increase occurred hours after Tim Cook, in a call to investors to present quarterly results, will aim that the company has had the best starter of the year in its history, with 17% year-on-year. How well the iPhone is working in China, the services and equipment like those mentioned Mac Mini and MacBook neo have contributed to this. However, he left another message: the global chip crisis is about to hit the ship much harder. In the earnings presentation, he noted that things will get considerably worse due to “significantly higher memory costs” in the coming quarters. The rest of the industry has already been experiencing that blow, but Cook detailed that, so far, Apple has been partially protected and isolated because it has been selling inventory accumulated in advance. The problem is that, as reserves have been depleted, they have had to resort to the only two options: eliminate the best-selling options (we just saw this with the Mac Mini, but We saw it recently with the Mac Studio) and raise prices. Curves are coming. The current CEO pointed out that Apple is considering a range of options to manage this impact, although he has not given more details. Really, there aren’t that many: price increases in basic equipment, configurations with less RAM and less storage, eliminating options that, for the user, are still an increase and something that is more complicated: taking the hit. What is clear, as we read on CNBC, is that Apple expects that this increase in costs will have “a growing impact on our business”, leaving a message to John Ternus who will become CEO of Apple next September 1: “we have the right leader to take on the role.” The truth is that Ternus is going to arrive at a sweet time for Applebut in one where the industry is on fire. The 256 GB version is over. Now starts at 512 GB for 969 euros Tsunami. This time we focus on Apple, although Cook has not really said anything that any other executive from the main technology companies would not have commented before. With SK Hynix, Samsung and Micron turning to the NAND chip market for data centers, the consumer market has been left to its own devices and the consequence is what we are now seeing with Apple. As we say, the company has dodged the first blow because they had accumulated stock, but now the hard part will come for users. From Samsung, in the also recent presentation of results, already they warned that there will be “significant shortages” in products that need these types of chips and that they expect the situation to continue until at least 2027. It is an ambitious estimate, since SK Hynix believes that things will return to normal in 2030 and Nvidia is even more pessimistic. If you need something…Buy now. It is the best warning because things do not look like they are going to improve. If you think you are going to need a device, you better buy it as soon as possible because the price will continue to rise or, simply, that device will stop selling. The mobile industry has been warning for weeks that prices are going to rise, the same thing happens with computers and even with hard drives with which you can make a NAS. And a personal example: when the crisis was beginning to be critical, at the end of January of this year, I bought a 2 TB T7 SSD from Samsung for 160 euros. Today, that same one is for about 229 euros, which is not even close to its fair price. And how says Samsung itself, things are going to get worse. Images | Xataka In Xataka | There is a company that has grown 3,000% in the stock market, even beating the performance of Nvidia: Sandisk