If you’ve been holding off on Apple hardware purchases, you might want to buy soon. As PCMag reports, outgoing CEO Tim Cook has confirmed the company will soon raise prices to offset the cost of acquiring memory and storage chips amid a global supply shortage.
“Unfortunately, price increases are unavoidable,” Cook tells The Wall Street Journal. “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.”
Although Cook didn’t provide specifics, WSJ expects price hikes to hit iPads and Macs first, followed by the new iPhone 18 Pro models expected in September. WSJ estimates that the starting price of Apple’s flagship smartphone could increase by $200. So, you may have to pay $1,299 for the base iPhone 18 Pro this year, up from $1,099 on the iPhone 17 Pro.
This comes as AI companies are spending big on memory and storage chips for their data centers and other infrastructure. PC and smartphone manufacturers have had to pay higher prices to acquire these chips, and many of them, including Dell, HP, Lenovo, and Samsung, have already passed on the rising costs to customers.
Apple was the only major hardware company that resisted the trend, but not anymore. Cook first hinted at possible price hikes during an earnings call in April. A few days later, Apple dropped the 256GB variant of the Mac mini and raised the computer’s starting price from $599 to $799.
We should have more clarity on this matter in the coming months. It may, however, not come from Cook himself. The Apple CEO is stepping down in September and will be replaced by current hardware chief John Ternus.
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