AI "sucks dry" storage chip capacity! Apple Inc. (AAPL.US) profit moat breached, iPhone Pro may rise by $270.

According to reports on Wednesday, Apple Inc. CEO Tim Cook stated in an interview that in order to hedge against the continuous rise in the cost of memory and storage chips, the company will raise prices on some products. Cook did not disclose which product lines will be affected specifically, nor did he indicate the potential price increase, while also not giving a clear timeline for the price increase. However, it is widely expected in the market that Apple Inc. will release its next generation of products lineup in September this year, including the iPhone 18 series, which will include the long-awaited foldable screen model. Reports suggest that prices for products like Mac and iPad may increase sooner. The departing CEO admitted in the interview, "The price increase is a last resort." He added, "We are doing our best to absorb the substantial cost increases passed on by suppliers. We have been trying to shield consumers from this pressure, but at present, it seems difficult to sustain." The exponential growth in demand for memory and storage chips by artificial intelligence companies is significantly raising upstream costs, which may force Apple Inc. to significantly increase end prices to maintain its profit margin. Estimates from research firm TechInsights suggest that the manufacturing cost of the next generation iPhone Pro may increase by around $270 due to this. If Apple Inc. chooses to fully pass on these costs, the price of the top-of-the-line iPhone may surpass the threshold predicted by the institution for the first time, further raising the price ceiling for high-end models. Considering Apple Inc.'s slowing growth in service business in recent years, hardware gross margin remains an important pillar of its overall profits, and price increases have almost become an inevitable choice to maintain financial stability. As of writing, Apple Inc. has not officially commented on specific price increase plans, but Wall Street analysts generally believe that this round of price adjustments will "transmit from high-end to mid-to-low-end" and may be implemented in stages throughout the year. Apple Inc. is not alone in this. Since the second half of 2025, a wave of price increases in storage chips ignited by AI demand has swept across the globe, with no mainstream phone manufacturers like Samsung spared. The root cause of this cost pressure lies in the "siphon effect" of artificial intelligence companies for storage chips. With the explosive growth in demand for large-scale model training and inference, HBM (high-bandwidth memory) and high-end NAND capacity have been heavily locked in by AI chip manufacturers, causing a tight supply of storage chips traditionally used in consumer electronics and a surge in prices. As one of the world's largest purchasers of storage chips, Apple Inc. has strong bargaining power, but the continuous upward pressure on upstream costs has affected its profit capacity. The demand for DRAM and NAND in an AI server is 8 times and 3 times that of a regular server, respectively. Server manufacturers are willing to pay over 30% more for the same storage products than phone manufacturers, leading to a continued squeeze on the supply of storage chips for consumer electronics. In addition, the expansion cycle is long. It usually takes 18 to 24 months from purchasing new equipment to achieving mass production. Even if new production capacity construction is started in the second half of 2025, it will take until 2027 to form effective supply, making it difficult to fill the supply gap in the short term.