Apple Expects "Significant" Increase in Memory Costs Starting in June Quarter
Apple stated in its latest earnings call that the company has already felt the pressure of rising memory costs in the quarter ending in March, and this pressure will further intensify in the June quarter and beyond. CEO Tim Cook frankly stated that Apple expects "significantly higher memory costs" in the June quarter, and the rise in memory prices will have an "increasingly large impact" on Apple's business after June.
Cook revealed that the reason there hasn't been a significant change in product pricing yet is largely due to Apple's large stockpile of memory inventory previously accumulated. This "deferred inventory" has provided the company with a certain buffer in the past few quarters, partially offsetting the surge in costs on the supply chain side. In the just-ended March quarter, memory costs already had a more noticeable impact on the company's profitability, but inventory digestion still helped Apple suppress the speed of cost pass-through in the short term. However, as existing inventory is gradually depleted, this "cushioning" effect will be difficult to sustain, and Apple's future choices regarding cost and pricing are becoming more acute.
Currently, the entire consumer technology industry is bearing the brunt of rising memory prices, which stems from the severe squeeze on global memory supply due to the demand from artificial intelligence infrastructure construction. From servers to data centers, large-capacity memory for AI training and inference clusters has become the priority for chip manufacturers, while consumer-grade devices have been pushed to the back of the supply chain, triggering widespread cost inflation. There have already been cases of several PC manufacturers significantly raising the prices of models equipped with high-capacity memory and solid-state drives, which is seen as a precursor to this round of "memory inflation." Apple has temporarily maintained relative stability in terminal pricing over the past few quarters by leveraging its scale and inventory strategies, but Cook's latest statement shows that this "isolation effect" cannot last indefinitely.
Cook pointed out in the conference call that the impact of memory prices on the company's performance in the December quarter last year was still limited. At that time, Apple had already warned that the pressure in the March quarter would increase significantly, and this concern has now materialized. For the upcoming June quarter, Apple management also gave a judgment of "significant impact but still with inventory hedging": memory costs will continue to rise, but the company can still rely on deferred inventory to a certain extent to mitigate the short-term impact. The real uncertainty comes from the time window after June – when the inventory buffer gradually disappears, Apple will need to rebalance between product configuration, supply chain negotiations, and pricing strategies.
Regarding how to deal with the surge in memory costs, Cook emphasized that Apple is "continuously assessing the situation" and has "a range of options available," but he did not disclose any specific measures or roadmaps. This means that Apple may adjust the memory capacity combinations of different models, optimize the cost structure, or leverage the profitability of other businesses to offset some of the hardware cost pressure in subsequent product cycles. From the current information, Apple is still trying to delay the transmission of rising memory costs to consumers without directly raising terminal prices, but in the context of continued high demand for global AI infrastructure and tight memory supply, how long this strategy can last remains a major question mark.