Daily Views on Tech Headlines | AAPL, INTC, TSMC, NVDA, AXTI

Research evidence excerpt

Daily Views on Tech Headlines | AAPL, INTC, TSMC, NVDA, AXTI

Quick Note

June 18, 2026 Hardware

Daily Views on Tech Headlines | AAPL, INTC, TSMC, NVDA,

Analysts AXTI

Matt Bryson

(617) 695-6302

matthew.bryson@wedbush.com

Antoine Legault, CFA, CPA AAPL, Memory: Apple to raise iPhone prices as memory and storage costs surge

(626) 497-1619

antoine.legault@wedbush.com View: In a WSJ interview, CEO Tim Cook (handing the role to John Ternus

in September) said Apple can no longer avoid raising prices to offset surging

memory and storage costs after trying to shield customers, with the situation now

unsustainable.

● Cook pointed to DRAM as the particular pinch point as supply is reallocated to

high-bandwidth memory for AI servers.

● No timing, magnitude, or product specifics regarding price increases were

detailed though the September launch of the iPhone 18 Pro/Pro Max offers a

likely inflection point.

● Apple's CEO said the company is willing to use its balance sheet to help expand

memory capacity but will not build its own fabs, and, notably, that "everything

needs to be on the table" on supply, including Chinese memory makers that US

firms currently need licenses to work with under national-security rules.

In our view, the larger surprise has been Apple's ability to hold pricing so long,

rather than its need to raise prices now. And while we also believe Apple still

has managed to negotiate favorable terms for forward memory contracts, that PX

is also up roughly 5x on new contracts. Finally, we believe Apple's openness to

support memory vendors through balance-sheet/prepay support is not a unique

stance among large buyers, but we also don't necessarily see memory vendors

as likely to take advantage of any such deals given historically strong cash flow

generation.