Apple has already hiked prices on Macs, iPads, Apple TV, and HomePod by $100 to $500. The iPhone is next.
The company’s upcoming iPhone 18 series, expected to launch in September 2026, is projected to carry price increases of $50 to $150 for base models and up to $200 for Pro configurations. The culprit is something most consumers never think about: the memory and storage chips buried inside every device they own.
DRAM and NAND chip prices jumped 90 to 95% quarter-over-quarter in Q1 2026. The kind of components that store your photos, run your apps, and keep your device from crawling to a halt nearly doubled in cost in the span of three months.
Why chips got so expensive
The explosive buildout of AI infrastructure, from training large language models to running inference at scale, requires enormous quantities of high-bandwidth memory and advanced storage. That demand has created supply shortages projected to persist into 2027.
