Within a span of five hours Thursday, Apple Inc. hiked the prices for such popular products as Xbox video-game consoles, Macs and iPads. Both companies blamed an unprecedented shortage of memory chips driven by the artificial intelligence boom. And despite high-profile efforts to increase supply, the crunch and its impact on consumer prices won’t end anytime soon. On Monday, Samsung Electronics Co. Investors love them, their customers are desperate and they’re raking in profits like never before. Apple is lobbying the Trump administration for approval to buy memory chips from a blacklisted Chinese supplier ChangXin Memory Technologies Inc., the Financial Times reported, underscoring the supply chain challenges facing electronics manufacturers. It’s not just memory chips that are in short supply. Sony Group Corp., for example, raised the price of its flagship PlayStation 5 by as much as $150 in March. Since then, memory prices have only gone up.
Key Takeaways
- And despite high-profile efforts to increase supply, the crunch and its impact on consumer prices won’t end anytime soon.
- are expected to announce new chip manufacturing investments worth hundreds of billions of dollars, according to South Korean media reports.
- Chief Executive Officer Sanjay Mehrotra said Wednesday that while chip availability may improve in 2028, there is “no line of sight” to when supply will catch up with demand.
- Already, the price of a DDR5 chip typically used in personal computers has increased more than fourfold in the last year, according to data from inSpectrum Tech Inc.
- “With tight supply and demand likely lingering into 2028 at this point, pricing is unlikely to decline through 2027,” said analyst Jake Silverman with Bloomberg Intelligence.
Insights & Analysis
- Micron, meanwhile, is trying to coax additional production from its current facilities even as it adds supply from an acquisition in Taiwan.
- “We increased capex even this year to be able to do some more productivity improvements and squeeze more production out of our existing fabs.” For consumers seeking to buy an Xbox or MacBook, however, it’s too little, too late.