Apple MacBook iPad prices have risen by up to almost 20% worldwide, as the company blames an unprecedented surge in demand for memory and storage chips driven by the buildout of AI data centres. The increases affect laptops and tablets but, for now, leave the iPhone untouched.
What Apple is charging now
The clearest example of the new pricing sits in Apple’s US store. The MacBook Pro with 1 terabyte of storage has moved from $1,699 to $1,999, a rise of roughly 18%. In the UK, the Neo, Apple’s lowest-priced laptop, has gone from £599 to £699 within months of its launch.
Apple’s own statement left little room for optimism: ‘We have never seen a component price increase this much, this quickly,’ the company said, adding it was ‘working tirelessly to find solutions.’
Apple‘s chief executive Tim Cook had signalled the direction of travel beforehand. In an exclusive interview with the Wall Street Journal‘s Rolfe Winkler on 17 June 2026, Cook called the situation around memory chips ‘unsustainable’ and described price increases as ‘unavoidable.’ His bottom line was unambiguous: ‘We definitely need memory pricing and supply to return to reasonable levels for consumer products. That’s the bottom line.’
Apple MacBook iPad prices and the wider AI chip crunch
The mechanism here is straightforward enough. AI data centres consume vast quantities of RAM and high-density storage. Supply has not kept pace with that demand, so component costs have risen across the board, and consumer device makers are passing those costs on.
Tech analyst Paolo Pescatore told the BBC the moves showed the ‘AI boom was now affecting consumer electronics,’ adding: ‘This is a significant moment because even Apple, with its scale and buying power, is no longer immune to the rising cost of key components.’
Reuters reported Cook’s WSJ interview as a candid acknowledgement that the world’s most valuable technology company had run out of road on absorbing costs internally.
Pescatore’s broader point, that this is a challenge ‘even for the world’s biggest technology companies,’ is hard to argue with. Apple’s supply chain clout is unmatched in consumer electronics. If it cannot insulate its customers from chip inflation, smaller manufacturers have no chance.
Dipanjan Chatterjee, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester, is sanguine about the commercial risk. ‘If anyone can survive a price increase with minimal blowback, it’s Apple,’ he said. The loyalty of Apple’s installed base is real, but it has limits, and a nearly 20% uplift on a premium laptop tests them.
Apple is not alone
Gaming hardware is feeling the same pressure. Valve said on Monday that its original price target for the Steam Machine was ‘no longer viable,’ launching the gaming PC at £879 in the UK and $1,049 in the US. Nintendo has also announced a Switch 2 price increase. These are not isolated decisions; they are symptoms of the same component market.
The question now is whether AI infrastructure spending cools enough to ease memory prices, or whether consumers are looking at a sustained period of more expensive devices. Cook’s own framing, ‘unsustainable’ and ‘unavoidable,’ does not suggest a quick resolution. Watch for Apple’s next earnings call for any update on component cost trajectories: that will be the first hard signal of whether relief is actually coming.
