Apple Inc. raised prices on Macs, iPads, home devices and the Vision Pro on Thursday, June 25, 2026, posting the changes to its online retail store after briefly taking the store offline that morning. The MacBook Air's starting price rose to $1,299 from $1,099, the MacBook Neo climbed to $699 from $599, and the iPad Air with 128GB storage increased to $749 from $599. The iPhone was not affected by the current round of hikes. In a statement, Apple said the consumer electronics industry is facing an unprecedented challenge, adding that the rapid expansion of AI data centres has created an extraordinary surge in demand for memory and storage, and that it has never seen a component price increase this much, this quickly.
The moves follow a warning from Chief Executive Tim Cook on June 17 that price increases were 'unavoidable' due to ongoing RAM supply shortages. Cook told The Wall Street Journal that Apple had been trying to shield customers from the increases but that the situation had become unsustainable, and said beyond the June quarter he expects memory costs to drive an increasing impact on the business. Cook likened the shortages to a hundred-year flood, saying he had never seen anything like it in any area in over 40 years. Apple had already moved ahead of Thursday's broader action by eliminating its lowest-tier Mac mini model, effectively raising its starting price from $599 to $799.
The memory market context underpinning the increases is severe. DRAM contract prices rose as much as 98% in the first quarter of 2026 and are forecast to climb a further 58% to 63% in the second quarter, according to industry tracker TrendForce [Source: TrendForce via Global Banking & Finance]. NAND Flash contract prices are expected to jump 70% to 75% quarter-over-quarter in Q2 2026 [Source: TrendForce via Tom's Hardware]. Counterpoint Research reported that DRAM prices rose 80 to 90 percent quarter-over-quarter from Q4 2025 into Q1 2026 across most segments [Source: IEEE Spectrum]. Apple is not alone in passing on those costs: Samsung, Microsoft, Sony and Dell have also raised prices in response to the shortage.
The supply constraint is rooted in a structural reallocation of manufacturing capacity. Samsung Electronics (005930.KS), SK Hynix (000660.KS) and Micron Technology (MU) — the three largest memory manufacturers — have pivoted limited cleanroom space and capital expenditure toward higher-margin enterprise-grade components for AI, according to IDC [Source: IDC]. Micron has noted a roughly 3-to-1 conversion ratio between high-bandwidth memory and DDR5 wafer capacity, meaning each HBM production ramp directly compresses general-purpose memory supply [Source: Tom's Hardware]. Memory makers have in recent months prioritised orders from AI chipmakers, leaving reduced supply for consumer electronics manufacturers. Micron reported that revenue in its latest quarter more than quadrupled and said on Wednesday it has locked in $22 billion in long-term commitments from customers seeking to secure memory supplies. IDC expects 2026 DRAM and NAND supply growth to remain below historical norms due to the ongoing capacity reallocation toward HBM for AI workloads [Source: IDC], while TrendForce anticipates a pronounced memory shortage through 2026, with new fabrication capacity unlikely to come online in volume before late 2027 or 2028 [Source: Tom's Hardware].
The price action at Apple (AAPL) lands as the company prepares for a leadership transition: on September 1, hardware engineering head John Ternus is set to become CEO, with Cook moving to executive chairman of the board.
Sources: Bloomberg, CNBC, Reuters, Global Banking & Finance, 9to5Mac, Wall Street Journal, MacRumors, Tom's Hardware, IDC, IEEE Spectrum