The American giant will pass on the components crisis to its prices, in a context of unprecedented tensions on global supplies.
Apple will soon increase its prices, due to the component crisis and the shortage of memory chips currently affecting the tech world, announced Apple’s departing CEO, Tim Cook, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal. “Unfortunately, price increases are inevitable,” he said.
The boom in artificial intelligence is straining global supplies of memory chips, as manufacturers favor those destined for giant data centers over less sophisticated chips used in consumer electronics, such as phones and laptops. As a result, a large number of components (RAM, graphics cards, etc.) have seen their prices explode, and a certain number of companies, forced to pay more for supplies, have announced significant price increases on their products in recent months, such as PlayStation, Nintendo, Xiaomi, Lenovo, HP.
Apple, until then, had tried to contain the impact of this crisis on its customers. “We are doing our best to mitigate the significant increases passed on to us, and we have tried to protect our customers from these increases, but the situation has become untenable,” lamented the Apple CEO.
A change of direction in a tense context
The boss, who will give way to John Ternus, current senior vice-president in charge of hardware engineering, on September 1, has not yet given any further details. John Ternus will take over as CEO of Apple on September 1, 2026.
The shortage of memory chips is affecting the entire global technology sector, pushing several manufacturers to increase their prices. Supply difficulties, exacerbated by growing demand linked to artificial intelligence, are disrupting the production and distribution chain of many market players. Consumers, already faced with high prices on certain electronic products, could see the bill increase in the coming months.
Faced with this situation, Apple joins the list of big tech names forced to pass on rising costs to their customers, illustrating the scale of the crisis currently shaking the global electronic components industry.
