The market punished Apple: shares collapsed after rising prices for MacBooks and iPads

The decision of the Apple corporation to adjust the retail price of its popular devices led to an immediate reaction of the financial market.  According to authoritative data from CNBC, Apple’s quotations were immediately asked for more than 6% within the framework of one trade. Such a sharp drop in the company’s market valuation marked the tech giant’s worst daily performance since April 2025. An obvious trigger for investors was the recognition of Apple’s management in its inability to fully contain the financial pressure caused by the rise in prices of semiconductor products in foreign markets.

New prices

The increase in cost affected both entry-level laptops and advanced workstations with large solid-state drives and RAM. Significant changes have taken place in the prices of compact MacBook Neo, MacBook Air and advanced computers of the MacBook Pro line with 1 TB of memory. In addition, the price tags have been updated for tablet computers of the iPad Air and iPad Pro lines.

Table: Comparison of the retail price of MacBook in the international market

Crisis of components and global demand for AI

The main trigger for the increase in the price of final products was the shortage and a jump in purchase prices for DRAM chips and NAND flash storage devices. The data center industry and the rapid launch of large-scale language models have refocused global memory chip production on providing high-speed, high-bandwidth memory for AI servers.

The head of the company, Tim Cook, emphasized that it became impossible to maintain retail prices by Apple itself. He has not encountered such a deep crisis in the cost of silicon wafers and memory throughout his long-term 40-year practice. Specialized agencies such as Counterpoint Research confirm the top manager’s words: according to their calculations, the market prices of storage devices and RAM have quadrupled in just the last three financial quarters. This crisis dynamic has brought huge excess profits to flash memory vendors such as Micron, which publicly report rapid revenue growth amid increased market demand.

Features of the strategy

Analysts see the current realities as a reason for another transformation of the positioning of Apple’s product lines. In order to maintain a high rate of profit, the manufacturer plans to abandon the release of modifications with a minimum stock of drives and RAM. The logical solution will be the transfer of a larger memory capacity to the basic segment along with the clear motivation of buyers to invest in Pro and Ultra series products.

Accelerated adaptation of the Apple Intelligence software package requires enormous amounts of RAM. It is known that the improved voice assistant Siri will force to equip modifications of future iPhones, which are being prepared, with an increased amount of RAM in the amount of 12 GB. According to the long-term expectations of IDC analysts, in the current period the average purchase price of each iPhone will rise by about 12%. Both the rising cost of internal systems on the crystal and the launch of sophisticated premium devices with innovative displays – including foldable OLED panels for the long-awaited Ultra series – will contribute to the increase in prices.

For ordinary buyers, the situation is controversial. Modifications with a large supply of storage (such as 1 TB Pro laptops) have increased in price the most – now you will have to pay more for the same amount of SSD and performance. Against this background, an interesting solution becomes the acquisition of warehouse stocks of the current model range from previous batches, whose retailers can still hold back the recommended prices.