Shares in Apple tumbled at their fastest rate for more than a year after the tech giant announced price increases on several iPad and MacBook models in response to soaring memory and storage costs. The Silicon Valley firm saw its shares drop by 6.1% overnight, wiping the equivalent of roughly 270 billion US dollars (£204 billion) off its market value. This represented the company’s largest single-day share decline since April 2025.
Price Hikes Across Product Lines
The company said it would increase prices across several MacBook and iPad models, marking the first formal move by Apple to pass increases in memory and storage costs onto its customers. In a statement, Apple said: “We have shielded our customers from these increases so far, but we have now reached a point where we need to begin raising prices on a number of products, including today’s increases for iPad and Mac. We have never seen a component price increase this much, this quickly.”
Specifically, the price of a MacBook Air with 512 gigabytes of storage rose to 1,299 dollars (£982) from 1,099 dollars (£831). Meanwhile, an iPad Air with 128 gigabytes of storage increased to 749 dollars (£566) from 599 dollars (£453).
Memory Shortage Driven by AI Boom
Intense competition across the tech sector linked to the AI boom has resulted in short supply of memory as producers prioritise major AI chipmakers such as Nvidia. The shortage of supply has led to higher costs as tech firms seek to secure memory. RSM UK’s technology senior analyst James Bull said: “Apple’s price increases are a visible sign of something that has been building for some time. The four largest US technology companies are forecast to spend 725 billion dollars on data centres and AI equipment in 2026 alone. That level of demand for memory chips has created a shortage the supply chain cannot keep pace with.”
Broader Market Impact
The slump in Apple shares and concerns over memory supply knocked stocks across the tech sector, weighing on global equity markets on Friday morning. Ipek Ozkardeskaya, senior analyst at Swissquote, said other global technology firms have seen their value hit. She said: “Other device makers like Dell, HP and Lenovo lost between 4% and 5%, while Samsung is down by more than 8% today, on worries that the massive rise in chip prices will eventually hit a wall. As such, the Korean Kospi index is having one of those days: an 8% fall at the index level, a halted trading session and unbelievably high volatility. Over in Japan, the Nikkei is down by more than 3% on the back of souring tech sentiment.”
