As Apple announced a rare extreme step of steep price increases across the MacBook series, iPad, home devices and Vision Pro line-up, investors seem to have been taken aback, resulting in Cupertino giant’s shares sinking as much as 6% in early trade. At the time of writing this article, Apple shares had lost 6% of price compared to yesterday’s close.
The rare price hikes, which went live across its online retail store today, have been set globally. And while Apple hasn’t raised prices of its more popular consumer products — iPhone, Apple Watch or AirPods, it has hinted there may be more price adjustments to additional products in the future.
Apple has blamed rising component costs for the sudden price hike. In a statement to Bloomberg, the company said “rapid expansion of AI data centers has created an extraordinary surge in demand for memory and storage”. It added that the company has “never seen a component price increase this much, this quickly.”
The price hikes are rather sweeping and unprecedented in Apple’s illustrious history. While there have been singular hikes for specific products, such hikes across categories of products is unheard of. What is interesting though, is to see how other players react. Apple is usually the benchmark when it comes to consumer electronics, and this might just make it easier for the likes of Samsung, Google and others to raise prices as well, considering the entire industry suffers from component shortages.
“We know this is not welcome news, and we are working tirelessly to find solutions,” Apple said.
In terms of pricing changes in India, the Macbook Neo, Apple’s cheapest Mac offering in India, was launched at ₹69,900, but is now priced at a starting price of ₹79,900.
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