Tim Cook says price increases are “unavoidable” ahead of iPhone 18 launch

Apple CEO Tim Cook has warned that price increases may be on the way as the company prepares to unveil its next generation of iPhone models later this year.

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Cook said rising costs across Apple’s supply chain, particularly for memory and storage components, have reached a point where the company can no longer fully absorb the impact.

“Unfortunately, price increases are unavoidable,” Cook said. “We’re doing our best to mitigate the huge increases that are being passed to us, and we’ve been trying to shield our customers from the increases, but the situation has become unsustainable.”

Apple is expected to announce the iPhone 18 lineup in September, though Cook did not confirm whether any potential price increases would affect the upcoming devices specifically.

The company has traditionally relied on its vast supply chain and long-term supplier agreements to help control costs and avoid passing price rises on to customers. However, Cook suggested that recent increases in component pricing have become too significant to offset entirely.

According to Cook, memory manufacturers have been raising prices amid growing demand and tighter supply across the industry.

“There’s less supply at a time when consumers want devices and the memory guys are passing along huge price increases,” Cook said. “We definitely need memory pricing and supply to return to reasonable levels for consumer products. That’s the bottom line.”

While Apple is reportedly willing to invest additional resources into helping suppliers expand production capacity, Cook said the company has no plans to manufacture its own memory chips.

Apple has not announced any pricing changes for future products, and it remains unclear which devices could be affected or how significant any increases may be.