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Image Credits:Wu Xiaoling/Xinhua / Getty Images4:28 PM PDT · June 17, 2026
It’s been called RAMageddon: AI’s insatiable request for hardware has caused a worldwide shortage of representation chips. Now outgoing Apple CEO Tim Cook is informing its customers that your adjacent Mac, iPhone, oregon iPad could beryllium much costly acknowledgment to surging representation and retention chips costs.
In a caller interview, Cook told the WSJ that terms increases are “unavoidable,” successful spite of efforts to sorb spot costs that person accrued fourfold since past year. He described the concern arsenic “unsustainable.”
Cook didn’t sanction which products volition beryllium affected oregon erstwhile prices volition rise, but he’s raised the alarm astir the impacts of RAMageddon before. In April, aft delivering grounds quarterly sales, he said that these higher costs could interaction Apple’s adjacent concern results. Incoming CEO John Ternus besides warned astir the contented that aforesaid month.
If Apple raises prices, the iPhone seems astir definite to beryllium impacted, representation proviso experts told the Financial Times. The institution is expected to motorboat its adjacent iPhone successful September, which gives it the accidental to denote accrued prices. Of course, Apple sells galore different devices that incorporate representation (DRAM) and retention (NAND) chips, including the Apple Watch, Mac, iPad, and Apple Vision Pro.
It’s not wide however overmuch much costly immoderate of these products volition be, though probe steadfast TechInsights gave the WSJ its estimate. It said Apple would request to adhd different $270 to the adjacent iPhone Pro to support its nett borderline intact. The iPhone 17 Pro starts astatine $1,099.
So acold AI has not been a peculiar boon to Apple. The institution is already nether unit to fig retired its AI strategy for its devices. It adjacent paid a $250 cardinal colony earlier this twelvemonth to extremity a mendacious advertizing suit filed aft it failed to deliver the AI features it promised 2 years ago.
The company’s Worldwide Developers league held earlier this period showed advancement connected fulfilling those erstwhile AI promises, including an overhaul of Siri. Of course, much on-device processing could mean much request for representation — a trajectory that seems destined to extremity with consumers paying much for Apple products.
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Kirsten Korosec is simply a newsman and exertion who has covered the aboriginal of proscription from EVs and autonomous vehicles to municipality aerial mobility and in-car tech for much than a decade. She is presently the proscription exertion astatine TechCrunch and co-host of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast. She is besides co-founder and co-host of the podcast, “The Autonocast.” She antecedently wrote for Fortune, The Verge, Bloomberg, MIT Technology Review and CBS Interactive.
You tin interaction oregon verify outreach from Kirsten by emailing kirsten.korosec@techcrunch.com oregon via encrypted connection astatine kkorosec.07 connected Signal.
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