APPLE RAISES MACBOOK AND IPAD PRICES CITING MEMORY COSTS

Apple announced price increases on Thursday across MacBook and iPad product lines, marking its first formal effort to pass higher memory and storage costs to consumers. The MacBook Neo entry model rose from £599 to £699, whilst the MacBook Air 512GB increased from £1,099 to £1,299 and the MacBook Pro 1T from £1,699 to £1,999. The iPad Air 128GB rose from £599 to £749, and the iPad Pro WiFi 256GB from £999 to £1,199. Apple's online store briefly went offline on Thursday morning before displaying the updated prices.

CEO Tim Cook stated that the company could no longer fully insulate customers from component cost increases tied to artificial intelligence expansion. Cook told The Wall Street Journal that memory and storage prices had increased at a rate he described as unprecedented in his four decades of experience. According to Counterpoint Research, memory and storage prices have quadrupled over the past three quarters as suppliers redirect production towards high-bandwidth memory used in artificial intelligence servers. Apple stated in a company statement that the rapid expansion of artificial intelligence data centres had created "an extraordinary surge in demand for memory and storage."

Apple indicated that further price rises remain possible, stating it has "reached a point where we need to begin raising prices on a number of products." The company noted it was "working tirelessly to find solutions" to the component shortage. Memory and storage suppliers including Micron have reported significantly improved financial performance; Micron's latest quarterly revenue more than quadrupled, with gross margin jumping from 39 per cent a year earlier to 84.9 per cent in the most recent quarter.