Apple raises Mac prices as AI memory crunch hits consumers

Apple is raising prices on its Macs and iPads, blaming a severe shortage of memory and storage chips that the company can no longer absorb. The move confirms that the massive capital flowing into artificial intelligence infrastructure is now rippling through to consumer electronics.

The bottleneck is straightforward: server farms are swallowing the global supply of memory chips. By 2026, data centres are expected to consume 70% of total memory production, leaving just three out of every ten chips for smartphones, laptops and tablets. This imbalance has driven up component costs across the hardware sector.

Outgoing chief executive Tim Cook, who hands the role to John Ternus on 1 September, described the squeeze in stark terms. "Unfortunately, price increases are unavoidable," he said. "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 likened the shortage to a hundred-year flood, a notable comparison from an executive who said he had never seen anything like it in over 40 years in the industry.

The price hikes are already taking effect, though not always as simple sticker increases. Apple raised the entry price of the Mac mini from $599 to $799 by discontinuing its lowest-tier model, effectively removing the cheaper option from the shelf. Cook did not detail future increases, but confirmed Macs and iPads are next in line.

For European businesses and consumers, Apple's move is a bellwether. If a company of Apple's scale and purchasing power cannot negotiate its way around the AI-driven memory crunch, smaller device makers and enterprise IT buyers will almost certainly face similar cost pressures. The AI buildout is no longer just a data centre story; it has arrived as a tangible input cost inflation for the broader technology market.

The impact may extend further into the autumn. The iPhone 18 Pro and 18 Pro Max are due in September, and while Apple has not confirmed pricing, the same supply constraints expose them to potential increases. The bill for the AI revolution has reached the retail checkout.