Memory costs put Apple’s next iPhones under price pressure

Memory costs put Apple’s next iPhones under price pressure

2 min read•Sep 7, 2026•
James Okafor
James Okafor

Apple’s next-generation iPhones are likely to come with higher prices as memory costs rise, first reported by The Verge. The pressure gives PC and smartphone makers a choice among raising prices, making fewer devices, putting less memory in them, or focusing on more expensive models with enough margin to absorb the added cost.

That pressure reflects a shortage that predates generative AI. Pandemic-era purchases pulled demand forward, leaving manufacturers with excess inventory when consumer spending weakened, while shrinking gains from fitting more chips onto each wafer delayed expansion before generative AI created a larger, more memory-intensive demand wave.

AI data centers use HBM, a specialized form of DRAM that is harder to produce and more lucrative. Micron estimates that a given amount requires roughly three times as many wafers as conventional DRAM, while phone and PC makers need more conventional DRAM for smaller AI models running on devices.

That leaves conventional phone memory competing for capacity with a more lucrative AI-oriented product. Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron account for about 90 percent of the market, and AI customers are willing to make long-term commitments.

Counterpoint estimates smartphone DRAM prices rose roughly 56 percent in the first quarter of 2026 and around 83 percent in the second. For 16GB of smartphone DRAM, the estimated cost rose from roughly $42 in the second quarter of 2025 to about $181 a year later.

Those figures are not necessarily Apple’s prices. Apple’s scale gives it supplier leverage and its customers have historically proved willing to pay premium prices, but the company has already raised prices across Macs and iPads and said higher memory costs directly reduced its gross margin.

The expected fall lineup is concentrated on the iPhone 18 Pro, Pro Max, and first foldable iPhone. A Wall Street Journal calculation based on TechInsights estimates says the iPhone 18 Pro could start at $1,299, $200 more than the iPhone 17 Pro.

New capacity will not provide immediate relief. Micron’s Idaho fab is expected to begin wafer output in mid-2027, while meaningful output from its New York complex is not expected until 2030.

Counterpoint does not expect capacity to catch up with demand until late 2027 or early 2028 in the best-case scenario; IDC expects the shortage to last through 2027 and well into early 2028 before meaningful relief.

Arizona appeals court vacates manslaughter sentence after AI video

An Arizona appeals court vacated the 10.5-year sentence of Gabriel Horcasitas while upholding his manslaughter conviction, first reported by Nytimes. The case returns to Maricopa County Superior Court for resentencing without the video, after judges found that it presented scripted statements as if the victim himself were speaking in court.

The three-judge panel said the video generated a likeness of Christopher Pelkey’s voice and appearance but did not reflect actual events. It found that allowing and relying on the video made the sentencing fundamentally unfair, and noted that no prior Arizona case had addressed the admissibility of such a depiction at sentencing.

The judges said a victim’s right to speak cannot override a defendant’s right to be sentenced on accurate, reliable information. They said the video collapsed the distinction between the family’s belief about what Pelkey would have said and Pelkey’s own voice and opinions.

The ruling distinguishes family members speaking about Pelkey from a generated likeness that appeared to speak for him.

Pelkey’s sister, Stacey Wales, presented the video during Horcasitas’s sentencing alongside victim-impact statements from family and friends. Wales wrote the script and said her husband and the couple’s longtime business partner helped create the video using Pelkey’s voice from a YouTube video and his face and torso from a funeral-service poster.

Judge Todd F. Lang praised the video as genuine, then imposed the maximum sentence of 10.5 years, more than the nine years prosecutors had sought.

Wales said nobody intended to make the court believe Pelkey was alive or that he had recorded the video before his death. She said she disagreed with the ruling and argued that families use slide shows, collages, hypothetical conversations and poetry to convey grief.

Wales compared the AI video with photography, saying it took 15 years of landmark cases around the 1860s before photography was widely accepted in courts.

The case returns to Maricopa County Superior Court for a new sentencing hearing without the AI-generated video.