During today’s conference call, Tim Cook addressed Apple’s mounting memory supply and pricing challenges, but suggested that adding more suppliers may not actually bring product prices back down. Here are the details.
’Unclear on the pricing side’
As Apple looks for options to mitigate the memory shortage that forced it to raise prices for several products, the company has been campaigning publicly and behind the scenes to secure US government approval to procure memory from the blocklisted Chinese suppliers CXMT and YMTC.
During today’s Q3 2026 earnings call, Tim Cook and Apple CFO Kevan Parekh were asked whether Apple’s push to diversify memory supply is “really about ensuring that you have supply and the way to mitigate memory inflation, or is it more to preserve the value proposition for your customer”.
After outlining the sharp increase in Apple’s memory costs over the past several quarters, Cook said that adding suppliers would help improve availability, but cautioned that it would not necessarily allow Apple to reverse its recent product price increases:
