Future Apple Product Price Increases

Welcome to Nif five Mac Daily four Friday, june nineteenth, twenty twenty six. I'm your host, Chance Miller We are sponsored this week by Back Blaze Leading off today, President Trump took to social media to confirm what was previously rumored today Apple and Intel have agreed to a partnership where Intel will manufacture chips for future Apple devices using Intel's America based fabrication sites. The breadth of this agreement is unclear. It's unlikely that Intel will be able to supply the latest generation chips for Apple's highest end iPhones anytime soon But still, Intel stock surged nine percent shortly after Trump's announcement Last month, analyst Ming Chi Quo said Intel had already kicked off production of legacy chips for older iPhones, iPads, and Macs too be super clear, these are still wholly Apple designed chips while Intel is merely joining the manufacturing side of the supply chain. So for the end user, nothing here is changing. Obviously, Apple would still love to have an alternate supplier for its highest end Apple silicon chips as well Currently, these chips are made exclusively by TSMC So Apple is highly reliant on one company and therefore cannot get rival suppliers to compete with one another and get lower prices But silicon fabrication is incredibly complex and TSMC is miles ahead of anyone else especially given Apple's scaling requirements Over time, that might change, but at least for the near term, any Apple and Intel agreement will be exclusively for low end or previous generation Apple products But nevertheless, getting intntel as part of the supply chain is beneficial for Apple economically and politically by enhancing its made in America production efforts Next up today, Apple is aiming to launch an iPhone Air two in the spring of twenty twenty seven, according to a new story from Bloomberg The iPhone Air two reportedly retain the same design as the current model but with improvements in two important areas First, the report says that current iPhone air two prototypes inside Apple have two cameras on the back The current iPhone aerir, of course, has a single forty eight megapixel rear camera This report says the iPhone Air two's second camera will be an ultra wide camera So if you were hoping for a telephoto lens, it sounds like you're out of luck for right now The single camera system on the existing iPhone air has been the most common customer complaint about the device, according to people with knowledge of the matter cited by Bloomberg The report also says Apple is focusing on improving battery life on the iPhone air two But the report says it's unclear if that will come from a larger battery or efficiency gains Ading a larger battery might be impractical given Apple's plans to make the iPhone air too. the exact same in terms of design as the current model If Apple indeed releases the iPhone air two in spring twenty twenty seven, it would launch alongside the base model iPhone eighteen As we've talked about before, Apple is splitting the iPhone release schedule starting this year So in fall twenty twenty six, we expect the eighteen Pro, the eighteen Pro Max and the iPhone fold foollowed by in spring twenty twenty seven, the iPhone air two, the iPhone eighteen, and the iPhone eighteen E We are sponsored this week by Back Blaze. As summer travel season kicks off, if you're traveling with your MacBook, you're probably carrying your digital life with you iCloud keeps your files in sync across devices and Time Machine protects you locally But what if your laptop is lost or damaged while traveling Do you have an off site backup setup Blaze runs automatically and creates a separate backup of your Mac in the cloud. even including external drives You set it up once and you're set iCloud for Sync, time machine for local backup and back bllaze for off site protection Try it free at backblaze d. com slash nine to five Mac and get twenty percent off with code nine to five daily My thanks to Back Blaze for sponsoring the show Running out this week, Apple has confirmed that its products will see price increases in the future ongoing memory supply constraints Apple CEO Tim Cook delivered the bad news in an interview with the Wall Street Journal ook cited the ongoing RAM supply shortage as reason for these unavoidable price increases. He said, quote Unfortunately, price increases are unavoidable doing our best to mitigate the huge increases that are being passed on to us been trying to shield our customers from the increases, but the situation has become unsustainable. end quote. didn't offer any additional details on the timing or the scale of these price increases. nor which products will be affected It's unclear if Apple will raise the prices of existing products or if Cook is referring to future generations of products being more expensive than their predecessors Cook said that prices for memory and storage are both issues for Apple buddy focused most on the RAM market in particular He called out the increased allocations going to so called high bandwidth memory that is used for AI servers He said, quote, There's less supply at a time when consumers want devices, and the memory guys are passing along huge price increases We definitely need memory pricing and supply to return to reasonable levels for consumer products. That's the bottom line When asked if Apple could use its cash and silicon expertise to build its own memory and storage factories, Cook said, quote We can't do everything. we know what we're good at The Wall Street Journal says Apple spends in the low tens of billions of dollars per year on memory and storage Historically, it has been able to use its size to wring the low prices out of suppliers, playing them off each other and leaving them little profit But as AI companies have entered the market has faced more competition and has been forced to wait in line. Finally, Cook said that during his time working in the electronics supply chain industry, he has never seen anything like this. He said, quote This is a hundred year flood I've never seen anything like it in any area over forty years End quote That wraps up another episode and another week of ninetiney to five Mac Daily If you like the show, it's very helpful to us if you head to Apple podcast and leave a rating and a review You can find an ad free version of the show at nine to fiveMac d. com slash join for five dollars a month or fifty dollars a year You can find all of the latest Apple newews on ninetiney five Back. com follow along with me on threads at Chance H Miller And we'll be back on Monday for a new week of Apple News