Apple Raises Prices Up to $300 on Macs and iPads

Apple on Thursday announced price hikes on MacBooks and iPads, its first formal move to pass higher memory and storage costs on to consumers after CEO Tim Cook said increases had become unavoidable.

Shares of the company closed more than 6% lower on Thursday after the price change, the worst fall since April 2025.

Apple said on Thursday that it will raise the prices of certain MacBooks and iPads by up to $300.

That wiped out about $265 billion of its market value, which remains above $4 trillion. The increases took effect immediately after the company's online store went dark Thursday morning and returned with new pricing.

What's Driving the Memory Crunch?

The company said AI-fueled demand for memory chips has sent prices soaring, a market dynamic that some call "RAMageddon."

DRAM prices surged 90% in Q1 2026 alone compared to Q4 2025, driven by an industry-wide pivot that has seen Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron shift 93% of combined production toward HBM for AI data centers. HBM now consumes 23% of total DRAM wafer output, up from 19% in 2025, according to TrendForce.

The voracious demand for HBM by hyperscalers, such as Microsoft, Google, Meta and Amazon, has forced the three biggest memory manufacturers (Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix, and Micron Technology) to pivot their limited cleanroom space and capital expenditure towards higher margin enterprise-grade components. This is a zero-sum game: every wafer allocated to an HBM stack for an Nvidia GPU is a wafer denied to the LPDDR5X module of a mid-range smartphone or the SSD of a consumer laptop.

Memory and storage prices have quadrupled in the past three quarters, according to Counterpoint Research, as suppliers steer more production toward the high-bandwidth memory used in AI servers.

"The consumer electronics industry is facing an unprecedented challenge," the company said in a statement. "The rapid expansion of AI data centers has created an extraordinary surge in demand for memory and storage. We have never seen a component price increase this much, this quickly."

Which Products Got More Expensive?

MacBook Neo now starts at $699 (up from $599), while MacBook Air now starts at $1299 (up from $1099).

The 13-inch MacBook Air 512GB now costs $1,299, up from $1,099, while a 1TB M5 MacBook Pro is now £1,999, also a $300 hike. The basic iPad is now $100 more expensive, up to $449 from $349, and all iPad Pro models have had a $200 hike.

The Apple TV 4K is now $199, up from $129 before, and the HomePod is $50 more expensive at $349. The Vision Pro headset now costs $3,699, up from $3,499.

iPhone, Apple Watch, and AirPods pricing is unchanged.

Tarun Pathak, research director at Counterpoint Research, estimates the higher cost of components could add roughly $200 per iPhone for Apple. He expects price increases of about $150 to $200 across the lineup, weighed more heavily toward higher-memory configurations than base models.

Cook Calls It a "Hundred-Year Flood"

Apple CEO Tim Cook confirmed the company would increase product prices in an interview last week. Cook explained that price increases had simply become "unavoidable" amid skyrocketing component costs affecting things like memory and storage.

"This is a hundred-year flood," Cook told The Wall Street Journal. "I've never seen anything like it in any area in over 40 years."

"We're doing our best to mitigate the huge increases that are being passed to us, and we've been trying to shield our customers from the increases, but the situation has become unsustainable," Cook said in the interview.

Apple added that it has "reached a point where we need to begin raising prices on a number of products," leaving the door open to more increases down the line.

Are iPhone Price Hikes Coming?

"Apple hasn't announced what the iPhone price increases will be, but they are surely coming," Nabila Popal, senior director of data and analytics at International Data Corporation, a market intelligence and advisory firm, said in an email. "The storm isn't over yet; this is just the beginning. iPhones are the biggest revenue driver for Apple, so they are saving that announcement for later."

More advanced on-device AI features require more memory, and Apple's new Siri experience will only work on newer hardware. IDC estimates roughly 54% of iPhones shipped since 2022 will not support the full new Siri experience.

IDC sees Apple's average selling price rising 12% this year, helped by a richer product mix and the expected launch of a foldable iPhone.

How Long Will the Shortage Last?

In Samsung's full earnings report released on April 30, 2026, the company's memory chief Kim Jaejune warned that "significant shortages" across memory products are expected to continue through at least 2027. According to the company, demand fulfillment rates have fallen to record lows as customers rush to secure future supply, SCMP reports.

SK hynix will double its memory wafer capacity within five years, SK Group chairman Chey Tae-won told reporters at Computex in Taipei on June 2nd, while repeating his forecast that the AI-driven shortage gripping the memory market will run until 2030.

Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra has predicted that the memory chip shortage will persist well beyond 2026. SK Group chairman Chey Tae-won has offered an even more sobering timeline, suggesting shortages could last until approximately 2030.

New fab capacity from Micron and SK Hynix will not reach volume production until 2027 at the earliest, creating a prolonged supply gap.

Memory Makers Reap Record Profits

The memory crisis has been a major boon for suppliers like Micron, which just reported a quadrupling in revenue and said its gross margin jumped from 39% a year ago to 84.9% in the most recent quarter, surpassing Nvidia and Meta.

Samsung's semiconductor division posted 53.7 trillion won ($36.1 billion) in operating profit during the first quarter of 2026, accounting for roughly 94% of the company's total quarterly profit as soaring AI memory demand drove record sales. Meanwhile, SK hynix reported record quarterly revenue of 52.6 trillion won ($35.5 billion), and operating profit of 37.6 trillion won ($27.8 billion), fueled largely by booming HBM sales for AI infrastructure.

As of June 2026, HBM3 costs approximately $200 per 24GB stack, HBM3E costs ~$300 per 36GB stack, and next-generation HBM4 is expected at ~$500 per 48GB stack. SK Hynix leads with 50-55% market share.

What Changed This Week

Apple executed its largest single-day price increase in modern history, raising MacBook and iPad prices by up to $300 as memory chip costs quadrupled over three quarters. The company's stock fell more than 6%, erasing $265 billion in market value, as investors absorbed the reality that even Apple's purchasing power cannot shield it from AI-driven supply constraints. CEO Tim Cook called the situation a "hundred-year flood," and analysts expect iPhone price increases to follow despite the company leaving those products unchanged for now.

What to Watch

Hours later, Microsoft announced it would increase the prices of its Xbox consoles starting August 1. Watch for additional price increases across consumer electronics manufacturers through the remainder of 2026. According to TrendForce, conventional DRAM contract prices are expected to increase by 58% to 63% quarter-on-quarter, while NAND Flash contract prices are forecast to rise by 70% to 75%. Apple's next earnings call in late July will provide insight into how the price increases affect demand and whether the company will extend them to iPhones. Samsung and SK Hynix quarterly results through the summer will signal whether memory supply conditions are improving or worsening heading into the critical holiday shopping season.

Reporting based on coverage from CNBC, Reuters, CBS News, NBC News, Bloomberg, TrendForce, IDC, Tom's Hardware, June 24-26, 2026.