Apple shares fell sharply Thursday after the tech giant raised prices on a number of its signature products to make up for what it said were skyrocketing memory prices resulting from the AI boom.<\/p>\n
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Apple closed the trading day down 6.12%, its worst one-day performance in more than a year. That wiped out about $265 billion worth of its market value, which remains above $4 trillion.<\/p>\n
The company had announced that prices for its MacBook Neo, MacBook Air, iMac, and iPad product lines would all rise, in some cases by as much as $200. Apple didn\u2019t raise the prices of the iPhone, Apple Watch and AirPods.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe rapid expansion of AI data centers has created an extraordinary surge in demand for memory and storage,\u201d the company told NBC News in a statement. \u201cWe have never seen a component price increase this much, this quickly.\u201d<\/p>\n
The company said it had \u201cshielded our customers from these increases so far, but we have now reached a point where we need to begin raising prices on a number of products, including today\u2019s increases for iPad and Mac.\u201d<\/p>\n
Apple said it was \u201cworking tirelessly to find solutions.\u201d The price increases took effect immediately and were already listed at Apple\u2019s online store at midday on Thursday.<\/p>\n
Last week, Apple CEO Tim Cook told The Wall Street Journal<\/a> that \u201cprice increases are unavoidable\u201d given the memory crunch. \u201cWe\u2019re doing our best to mitigate the huge increases that are being passed to us,\u201d Cook told the paper.<\/p>\n Apple is far from the only tech giant under pressure from the rising cost of chips capable of storing all the data required to operate today\u2019s cutting edge consumer products. Microsoft\u2019s Xbox division said Thursday it was raising prices by $100 for some models and $150 for higher-memory capacity models. <\/p>\n \u201cUnfortunately, console storage and memory prices have increased by more than 2.5x and we expect another doubling by the fall of 2027,\u201d the company said. <\/p>\n The memory market is dominated by a small number of companies: South Korea\u2019s Samsung and SK Hynix, Japan\u2019s Kioxia and two American firms, Micron Technology and Sandisk.<\/p>\n