Apple Responds to Skyrocketing RAM and Storage Chip Prices

[bigglow]

Apple will certainly negotiate well for better prices but I think this is where Apple's margins will help. It's likely Apple will eat most or all of the cost increases unless it's looking like it will be a problem for years. They will, however, possibly raise the upgrade prices.

RAM (and SSD) prices are crazy currently.

My last body was a 2015 Canon EOS 5Ds R purchased the very week of its release. I recently updated my kit with the 2024 Canon EOS R1 and the transition has been a stark lesson in technological evolution and cost. My 2015 camera relies on the now-obsolete PATA-based CompactFlash format (UDMA 7, 160MB/s) a standard that feels like a relic compared to the NVMe-based architecture of today.

In late 2025 a Delkin POWER 128GB (min sustained write of 700MB/s) was retailing for $79.99; today, that same card is $115.48. Even more dramatic is the ProGrade 240GB Gold (min sustained write of 805MB/s), which jumped from $97.99 in October to $169.99 this January.

While the R1 supports CFexpress 4.0, it operates on a 2.0 bus. Since 99% of my work consists of high-speed stills (under 40fps) with almost no video, I’m trying to balance the need for sustained write speeds against a market that seems to be pricing itself out of reach.

I should've bought the 2024 R1 and 2024 MBP 16" before April 2025's 10% Reciprocal Tariff & AI "tax" after that.

 

[svish]

Think for the immediate future, there won't be any change in prices. But with the launch of M6, expecting Apple to increase upgrade prices for each memory/storage increase to $250, up from the current $200.

 

[maerz001]

A range of options = removing braided USB-C cable and removing / digitizing the printed inserts

Don’t think the $1 items will do it. Raising prices will be more likely

 

[Radeon85]

Don’t think the $1 items will do it. Raising prices will be more likely

$1 might not be much, until they include it in 100,000,000 products, then it's a pretty decent amount of money.

 

[CATiNTHESTORE]

“For the first time in decades, Apple's RAM prices seem to be in line with the market “

(c) Not Me

 

[code-m]

Apple’s upgrades have always been so expensive that in the current DRAM market situation they just seem “normal”.

The only brand that doesn’t have to raise prices to keep making profit.

Nah the margins on the ram and storage upgrades will just be thinner.

 

[code-m]

$1 might not be much, until they include it in 100,000,000 products, then it's a pretty decent amount of money.

Just spent $2 billion to acquire a start-up, I am sure Tim is having sleepless nights.

 

[maerz001]

$1 might not be much, until they include it in 100,000,000 products, then it's a pretty decent amount of money.

Well did u see the memory price increase? Multiple your „decent amount“ by 100

 

[code-m]

With laptop prices from Samsung, LG, and other companies skyrocketing, Apple, which already makes a profit on RAM and SSD prices, will likely see a turnaround in Mac sales if the M4 chip is priced the same in the M5 Pro and M5 Max.

Many of those companies are selling at razor thin margins compared to Apple. It will be interesting to see how the other navigate as if their raise prices it will give Apple an opportunity to capture sales or increase their own prices to keep the status quo.

I can either buy this Samsung, HP, etc computer or tablet for this price or buy an Apple product for similar if not much more.

 

[hajime]

Apple already increased the RAM and SSD upgrade cost a year ago.

 

[code-m]

At least AI will replace us.

And RAM from Apple will cost more than gold, to the moon. 🚀

A world where AI has a conversation with other AI, I much rather watch paint dry.

 

[code-m]

Translation, we charged obscene prices for many years for extra RAM and storage, so we can take a hit for a while. So when we offer future products at the same price, we look like the good guys, making you think you are actually getting a good deal.

Apple playing the long game for RAM and SSD prices. Finally paid-off, made some interest on all the inflated prices to ride out the rough times ahead.

 

[Velli]

Think for the immediate future, there won't be any change in prices. But with the launch of M6, expecting Apple to increase upgrade prices for each memory/storage increase to $250, up from the current $200.

We’ll see, but I don’t think so. Apple is very good at setting upgrade pricing (RAM and otherwise) such that they extract the maximum amount of money from the customers. Cost is what it is. The reason they have high margins is that the cost price is not determining the selling price. If they could extract more money by charging 250 rather than 200, they would have already done it.

I think they will push out any planned increases in base RAM or upgrade amounts instead, in ways that are less visible to the customer.

But I could be wrong, time will tell.

 

[Seoras]

Apple will have contracted supply of RAM at a previously agreed on price.
So the real question is how long until they have to renegotiate those contracts and pay the new market price.

The AI bubble will burst.
They will still be shipping record numbers of phones when the AI RAM demand collapses.
Apple will probably (re)negotiate with that on the table.

I suspect TSMC will take the same view that, yes NVidia is the biggest customer now, but for how long?

 

[Ethosik]

Good opportunity for Apple and developers to start looking at efficiency and removing software bloat and code bloat.

I remember when 4GB RAM on a Late 2006 MacBook with Snow Leopard 10.6 was overkill.

No. I fear that we will get to the point where we need to "rent" our computing power. Amazon executive said the quiet part out loud and said owning hardware will be a thing of the past.

 

[Ethosik]

Remember when there was a chip crisis with cars? Did cars get cheaper since then? The big boys want to push you to use cheap dumb terminals connected to major data centers they are building. Fully loaded computers of the future are going to be for pro's only, the rest could get these cheap boxes they'll pay endless subscriptions to use and essentially rent out much more powerful systems to do their number crunching with absolutely zero privacy and make sure you behave so you don't get locked out.

Yes this is the end goal. Even if the AI bubble bursts it won’t help.

 

[novagamer]

Guarantee they'll just go back to providing 4GB memory as base, to protect the margins.

I'll take that bet. They most certainly will not. @ me if I'm wrong and I'll send you a dollar.

 

[Bonte]

Sad part consumer Ram and SSD chips dont go into Ai servers as they are specialized mostly.
------===>>>

True, but chip foundries generally have a fixed capacity. If they produce more high margin AI chips then there are less chips for the low margin consumer market, driving up prices.

I’m sure Apple has locked in long term capacity and pricing years ago, so the impact should be manageable. A contraire, people are looking at the Mac again for high performance computers, this could benefit Apple’s Mac market.

Then for the future, Apple could produce M-chips with fixed RAM and SSD included in the chip. The one company that could pull this off is Apple.

 

[antonrg]

Translation, we charged obscene prices for many years for extra RAM and storage, so we can take a hit for a while. So when we offer future products at the same price, we look like the good guys, making you think you are actually getting a good deal.

And that's the best outcome in this situation. I sense they will just bump up the prices even higher.

 

[cjsuk]

No. I fear that we will get to the point where we need to "rent" our computing power. Amazon executive said the quiet part out loud and said owning hardware will be a thing of the past.

Amazon and Microsoft have been pushing this heavily for years. Even our security guys were into the idea.

However anyone who has actually used their remote PC stuff in AWS knows it’s basically like being kicked in the balls all day.

This is incidentally a hill I will die on at the moment what with geopolitical instability. US centric controlled computing is a civilisation level risk.

 

[AppleFan78]

Isn't everything, at this point, using Apple Silicon? Doesn't all of it consist of SoC with Unified Memory? Apple is no longer buying RAM sticks. RAM is part of the SoC package. I'm having a hard time seeing how RAM prices are really impacting Apple.

 

[Elohim369]

Would be nice if Apple took a small fraction of their countless billions in cash reserves and built a Terafab on american soil. Make your own chips!

Samsung makes displays, chips, RAM, everything... Apple can't?

The whole cheap China manufacturing thing is over, Apple is already diversifying to different countries, but it would be smart to make the most critical / rare components themselves.

 

[d686546s]

I sort of expect products for the next couple of years to either get worse or more expensive. It's likely that Apple will eat some of the cost, but I wouldn't be surprised if they raised prices to an extent. There's a limit to how much you can do that before stuff becomes unaffordable, so equally I expect a drive to lower cost, ie using cheaper components.

I upgraded my phone this year for that reason. It's a gamble and maybe it was unnecessary, we'll see.

 

[Mega ST]

I armed up RAM in time for my MBP M4 MAX and can wait it out.

 

[smaffei]

Good opportunity for Apple and developers to start looking at efficiency and removing software bloat and code bloat.

I remember when 4GB RAM on a Late 2006 MacBook with Snow Leopard 10.6 was overkill.

Yeah, it's not that simple. Mac OS development has changed a lot in 20 years. (I should know because I've been writing Mac apps since 1988).

There any many layers of abstraction now before you get to actual hardware. The SDKs and tools needed to write apps are very weighty because they do so much more than what they did 20 years ago. Not to mention that SwiftUI makes apps easier to write at the cost of efficiency and app flow control.