Summary created by Smart Answers AI
In summary:
- Macworld reports that Apple faces worsening memory supply issues through 2027, according to analyst Ming-Chi Kuo’s predictions.
- Rising component costs have already led to higher Mac and iPad prices, with future iPhones potentially facing similar increases or stock shortages.
- AI server infrastructure demand is diverting memory from consumer electronics, forcing Apple to lobby for access to blacklisted Chinese suppliers.
Having held steady for months while the rest of the industry increased prices in response to the ongoing RAM crisis, Apple finally and dramatically gave way last week. Macs and iPads saw increases of anywhere from $100 to more than $500, a move the company insisted was the result of unprecedented rises in the cost of components.
Commentators questioned the magnitude of the increases but some form of price rise was inevitable. The burgeoning demand for AI server infrastructure is seeing more and more memory siphoned away from consumer electronics and into giant data centers. And a new report indicates that the situation is going to get a lot worse before it gets better.
In a Twitter/X post on Sunday, the respected analyst Ming-Chi Kuo discussed his latest industry checks, which make for gloomy reading for anyone planning to buy a Mac (or other Apple product) in the near future. It’s not just about high prices, either. Apple shoppers could also see delivery times lengthen as the company struggles to get enough components to meet demand.
“The memory supply-demand gap will keep widening through 2027,” Kuo writes. “Of the memory capacity allocated to consumer electronics in 2026, an estimated 15–20% is expected to shift to data centers in 2027, and that share could grow… Due to tight memory supply, Apple’s actual pull-in volume of A20 chips in 2H26–1Q27 could be 10–20% below its original target.”
Officially, the A20 chip doesn’t exist yet, but that’s the processor on which the iPhone 18 Pro will be based when it launches this fall. And that suggests that the unpopular Mac and iPad price rises could be followed by even more unpopular iPhone price rises (and/or stock shortages) in due course. This isn’t the first indicator that the RAM crisis may have a year or more still to go–one analyst recently predicted it wouldn’t start to ease until 2028–but there’s a new pessimism to the idea that it will actively get worse through next year.
Apple’s response to the situation isn’t just to raise its prices, as drastic a step as that was when it finally came. It’s also making full use of its considerable political influence, lobbying the Trump administration for clearance to buy memory from the Pentagon-blacklisted Chinese company ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT).
As Kuo notes, Apple CEO Tim Cook has rare leverage in both Washington and Beijing, but his argument that the deal needs to be finalised before Cook steps down as CEO in September may be wide of the mark. Cook will stay with the company beyond that point, and it is likely that his day-to-day duties as chairman will include more lobbying than currently, not less.
But as Kuo astutely points out, the deal doesn’t necessarily need to be signed in order for Apple to benefit: merely the attempt makes for good PR.
“Even if the effort goes nowhere,” he writes, “the media coverage can still leave the market with the impression that Apple tried but was constrained by U.S. policy. That may help ease frustration over price hikes and longer delivery times.”
