Apple CEO John Ternus warns that RAM cost increases are now “unprecedented” and makes me fear the worst if further Mac price increases occur
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- John Ternus has warned that: “What we are seeing with memory prices right now is unprecedented.”
- Apple CEO warned that RAM costs will rise further in this last quarter of 2026
- It sounds even bleaker than Apple’s previous statements about the RAM crisis, and follows many other warnings that 2027 will be a miserable year for prices.
Apple is warning of an “unprecedented” rise in the cost of RAM, adding to the cacophony of alarms that have been ringing about the price of memory chips (and other PC components) recently.
The Guardian reports that in a conference call following Apple’s fiscal third-quarter results, which were better than analysts expected, driven by the iPhone, Mac mini and sales in China, new Apple CEO John Ternus addressed the topic of the RAM crisis.
Ternus, who recently took the reins from Tim Cook, grimly warned that: “What we’re seeing with memory pricing right now is unprecedented.”
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He then noted that memory costs would rise further in the final quarter of 2026 compared to the rest of the year, during which, as you have no doubt seen, we have already witnessed a sharp increase in prices.
Even though its financial results beat analysts’ forecasts, Apple informed investors that these higher memory costs will erode some of its profit margins, which meant the company’s shares fell.
Apple raised prices on Macs earlier this year, as well as iPads and, more recently, iPhones, and Ternus acknowledged that this had “provided some compensation” for Apple in terms of the current cost crisis around components.
Analysis: Ternus becomes more severe
It’s an ominous statement from Ternus, and it sounds harsher than the warning Apple issued before the Mac (and other) price hikes occurred in June 2026. Back then, when Cook was still CEO, he warned of “significantly higher memory costs” that would “drive an increasing impact” on Apple products, which, as noted, came to pass.
Now we hear the word “unprecedented,” which sounds much more worrying than “significant”; although to be fair, this refers to both what has already happened this year and what is to come. But we’re clearly set for more price hike misery from Ternus here, and it’s hard to see how this won’t have a bigger impact on Macs, iPhones and iPads, if not in this quarter, then in 2027.
Of course, we don’t know to what extent profits could be eroded by more expensive memory chips, or how this could be offset if consumers had to foot that bill. Only time will tell about it.
Mac mini sales were mentioned in the report, which cited Ben Barringer, head of technology research at investment management firm Quilter Cheviot, as responsible for some of Apple’s profit increase during the most recent quarter, and that’s due to growing demand for homegrown AI.
The Mac Studio is a big part of that picture, too, and this particular PC came up as an example of how ridiculous the price of RAM has become at the top end of Apple’s product tree. If you want a Mac Studio with 512GB of RAM, you’ll now pay more than double the cost of a Mac Studio that has 256GB of memory, meaning it’s cheaper to buy two of these latest computers (and get two CPUs/GPUs in the process).
It’s a strange situation, but this is what we got to with memory upgrades, which were always very expensive for Apple, even before the RAM crisis started (that goes for storage too).
And according to Ternus, this situation will only get worse, which, of course, is also the opinion of the industry in general and several analysts. I can’t begin to count the warnings we’ve received in recent months that the RAM crisis is getting even more serious, so at this point it’s just a question of how much worse things could get.
I fear that some categories of tech and PC components will become increasingly unaffordable next year, and I recently wrote about why Black Friday could be a good time to make certain purchases.
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