US Economic Perspectives: Small inflation impact from Apple price hikes

Research evidence excerpt

US Economic Perspectives: Small inflation impact from Apple price hikes

Global Research

25 June 2026ab

First Read

EconomicsUS Economic Perspectives

Small inflation impact from Apple price hikes Americas

Alan Detmeister

Economist

alan.detmeister@ubs.com

19% Apple price increases to add a bit more than 0.02pp to core PCE prices

+1-212-713 1222

Today Apple raised prices a (logarithmic) average of 19% on a wide variety of products.

Jonathan Pingle(Figure 1Apleincreasedpricestodayonawidevarietycomputerproducts, see press coverage here and here) A simple back-of-envelope calculation

suggests that the direct impact of the price increase will be small: around 0.02pp impact

jonathan.pingle@ubs.com

on the PCE price level and a bit over 1bp for the CPI. +1-212-713 2225

Abigail Watt

Apple's share of the consumer personal computers and peripheral equipment basket Economist

sampled by the CPI likely is in the neighborhood of 20%. Further, the computer and abigail.watt@ubs.com

peripheral basket accounts for 0.3% of the CPI and 0.5% of PCE. Multiplying these +1-212-882 6929

together gives a CPI impact of 19% price increase * 20% Apple share * 0.3% weight = Amanda Wilcox

0.011pp (i.e. around 1bp), and a PCE price impact of 19% price increase * 20% Apple Economist

share * 0.5% weight = 0.019pp (i.e. around 2bps). These should be treated as very amanda.wilcox@ubs.com

rough estimates as we do not know the exact weight in the CPI of the Apple products +1-212-713 3899

with the price increases today. Jalen Nichols

The impact will spread across June, July, and August CPIs jalen.nichols@ubs.com

As today is the 25th of the month, most of the June CPI data will have already been +1-212-882 6905

collected. Further, CPI prices for computers and peripherals are sampled every month