The global memory shortage has a backstory, and one of Apple's own chip suppliers just sketched it out.
Micron's chief business officer, Sumit Sadana, told The Wall Street Journal that brutal price pressure from large buyers during a prior industry slump forced chipmakers to shut down capacity investments in 2023. Margins went negative. Expansion plans died. Sadana stopped short of naming Apple, but Micron is a direct supplier of DRAM and NAND flash for iPhones, Macs, and iPads — and Apple is well known for extracting favorable terms from its supply chain through long-term purchasing contracts. "We told a couple of the customers who were being very aggressive with pricing at that time that this is not constructive," Sadana said.
The timing matters. Apple recently hiked prices across its Mac, iPad, Apple TV, HomePod, and Vision Pro lines — leaving only the iPhone, Apple Watch, and AirPods untouched. The day of the announcement, Apple's stock fell 6%, erasing roughly $265 billion in market value in a single session. Tim Cook had flagged the move in advance, describing memory costs as a "hundred-year flood" and blaming surging demand for high-bandwidth memory in AI servers for squeezing out consumer-product buyers.
The loop here is almost darkly comic: Apple pressed suppliers for lower prices, suppliers cut investment, supply tightened when AI demand exploded, and Apple ended up raising prices on its own customers anyway. Aggressive procurement saved money in 2022 and cost it — and consumers — considerably more in 2026.