SAN FRANCISCO, Jan 29, 2026, 01:27 (PST)
- Apple is expected to try to keep the iPhone 18’s starting price steady, analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said
- Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix have pushed up quoted prices for low-power phone memory, a report said
- Apple has shifted memory price talks to a quarterly cycle as AI demand tightens supply
Apple is preparing to absorb higher memory costs to avoid raising the starting price of its iPhone 18 models, supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said this week.
The push comes as a global squeeze on smartphone memory chips worsens, driven in part by heavy demand from AI data centers. For consumer electronics makers, memory is a key cost line and one of the hardest to lock down when supply tightens.
It matters now because Apple is heading into its quarterly earnings update on Thursday with investors watching margins, while the next iPhone cycle looms in the second half of 2026 and suppliers reset pricing. A broader run-up in component costs can force device makers to either lift prices or accept thinner profits.
Kuo wrote that Apple will avoid raising prices “as much as possible” and “absorb the costs” of rising RAM prices, while shifting iPhone memory price talks with suppliers from a six-month cadence to quarterly negotiations. He also flagged a separate bottleneck in “glass cloth” used on printed circuit boards, as suppliers prioritize orders linked to the booming AI business, including demand tied to Nvidia, AMD and Qualcomm. Theverge
Apple’s insulation comes from scale and long-term supplier arrangements, but Kuo has warned the math is changing quickly. AppleInsider cited Kuo as estimating Apple paid about $30 for a 12GB LPDDR5X module at the start of 2025 and about $70 by the end of 2025, underscoring how sharply pricing has moved in less than a year. Appleinsider
A separate report from ZDNet Korea said Samsung and SK Hynix agreed in talks with Apple to sharply increase prices for iPhone low-power DRAM — known as LPDDR, a type of memory designed to cut power use in devices like smartphones. The report said Samsung’s offer implied a rise of more than 80% from the prior quarter, while SK Hynix proposed an increase around 100%. Translate Phonearena
Kuo’s view is that Apple can lean on its ecosystem to ride out the squeeze. A report carried by Yahoo Finance said Apple appears willing to take “margin pain” rather than “sticker shock” in the near term as memory costs rise. Yahoo
Still, Apple’s leverage does not remove the supply constraint. Kuo has pointed to quarterly renegotiations as a sign suppliers hold the upper hand, with more price resets likely as the year progresses.
The risk is that memory prices and other materials keep climbing faster than Apple can offset, forcing harder choices closer to launch — higher prices on some configurations, weaker hardware margins, or tighter supply that limits how many phones can be shipped. Any broader slowdown in demand would also make it tougher to justify absorbing costs.
Apple’s investor call on Thursday could offer the next signal on how the company sees the component cycle and whether memory inflation is bleeding into guidance for the coming quarters. Apple
The supply dynamics are being shaped by AI hardware, not phones. Memory makers have put more capacity toward HBM, or high-bandwidth memory used in AI accelerators, while demand for conventional DRAM and LPDDR remains high — a mix that has pushed up prices across categories.
For now, Kuo’s message is simple: Apple wants the iPhone 18 starting price to stay flat, but the quarterly supplier talks mean the next round of memory pricing will decide how long that stance holds.
