{"id":726531,"date":"2026-06-26T04:36:10","date_gmt":"2026-06-26T04:36:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/726531\/"},"modified":"2026-06-26T04:36:10","modified_gmt":"2026-06-26T04:36:10","slug":"apple-raises-ipad-and-macbook-prices-blaming-cost-of-chips-amid-ai-boom-apple","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/726531\/","title":{"rendered":"Apple raises iPad and MacBook prices, blaming cost of chips amid AI boom | Apple"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"dcr-1s160rg\">Apple raised iPad and MacBook prices on Thursday, saying it could no longer shield customers from soaring memory and storage chip costs driven by the AI industry\u2019s data center buildout.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1s160rg\">The move does not affect Apple\u2019s cash cow, the iPhone. But it would take the starting price of the \u2060Neo, its lowest-priced laptop, from $599 to $699 mere months after launch.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1s160rg\">The increase shows that even the world\u2019s most valuable consumer electronics company, with supply-chain relationships that are the envy of the industry, is not immune to a memory price surge that has dulled the outlook for smartphone and PC sales.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1s160rg\">Memory \u2060makers such as Micron have, in recent months, prioritized orders from AI chipmakers such as Nvidia. The move has helped the memory makers to record profits, but has left little supply for electronics makers. Those, in turn, have been forced to increase prices.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1s160rg\">\u201cWe have never seen a component price increase this much, this quickly,\u201d Apple said in a statement. \u201cWe have shielded our customers \u2060from 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 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/technology\/ipad\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" data-component=\"auto-linked-tag\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">iPad<\/a> and Mac.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1s160rg\">Prices of a MacBook Air with 512 gigabytes went up $200. A MacBook Pro \u200cwith 1 terabyte of storage will become $300 more expensive. Apple also raised prices for both versions of its HomePod smart speaker and Apple \u200cTV set-top box. Shares of the company fell nearly 5%, while rival Dell was down more than 8%.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1s160rg\">Apple\u2019s deep supplier ties have provided some cushion, several analysts said \u2013 some of its rivals have been forced to raise prices even more sharply.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1s160rg\">Still, analysts expect prices for the iPhone to go up next.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1s160rg\">\u201cThe iPhone isn\u2019t spared. Its hike is coming,\u201d said Nabila Popal, a senior research director at IDC. \u201cIt was incredibly strategic for Apple to make the price hike announcements prior to the iPhone fall launch, so the headlines at launch is not the price hikes but the value the new phones bring.\u201c<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1s160rg\">Prices of dynamic random access memory, used in virtually all modern tech gadgets, rose as much as 98% in the first quarter \u2060of 2026 and are set to jump by another 58% to 63% in the current quarter, according to industry tracker TrendForce.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1s160rg\">That surge, \u200bdubbed by some experts as \u201cRam-ageddon\u201d, has been driven by a boom in \u200bAI data center construction, with companies like Nvidia signing long-term deals \u200bwith memory makers who are racing to increase capacity.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1s160rg\">Micron said on Wednesday it has locked in $22bn in such long-term commitments from customers looking to secure their \u200bmemory supplies.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1s160rg\">The rising costs are expected to \u200cweigh heavily on device sales this year, \u200bwith research firm IDC estimating that the smartphone \u200bmarket would see its biggest-ever annual decline of nearly 14% this year, while the PC market would fall 11.3%.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Apple raised iPad and MacBook prices on Thursday, saying it could no longer shield customers from soaring memory&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":726532,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[28],"class_list":["post-726531","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/726531","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=726531"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/726531\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/726532"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=726531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=726531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=726531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}