Apple has raised prices on MacBooks and iPads due to a shortage of memory chips

Apple has announced price increases for a number of MacBook and iPad models. In doing so, the company is passing on the increased costs of memory and storage to consumers, according to CNBC. Last week, CEO Tim Cook warned that it was no longer possible to keep prices down.

Specifically, the MacBook Neo now costs $699 instead of $599. The MacBook Air with 512 GB of storage will cost $1,299 instead of $1,099. The price of the 128 GB iPad Air has increased from $599 to $749.

"The consumer electronics industry is facing an unprecedented challenge," said an Apple spokesperson, as quoted by Bloomberg. "The rapid expansion of AI data centers has caused an extremely sharp increase in demand for memory and storage. We have never before seen component prices rise so sharply and so quickly."

Apple added that it is "forced to start raising prices" — CNBC called this a hint at further price increases.

According to data from Counterpoint Research cited by the TV channel, memory prices have quadrupled over the past three quarters as manufacturers are shifting more and more production capacity toward the manufacture of high-bandwidth chips used in AI servers.

This news story is being updated.

This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor