Memory chip shortage traces back to Asia, and to China

• Apple’s price hikes put a consumer face on a memory chip shortage rooted in Asia’s big three memory makers.
• Cook signals openness to Chinese supply, suggesting US sourcing limits should be reconsidered.

The memory chip shortage that pushed Apple to raise prices this week runs upstream to a small group of Asia-anchored suppliers and to decisions being made in Korea about who gets served first. Chief executive Tim Cook told the Wall Street Journal that price increases across Apple’s line are now unavoidable, blaming surging memory and storage costs and likening the squeeze to a “hundred-year flood” he had not seen in more than four decades in the industry.

The pressure starts with an unusually concentrated supply base. Samsung and SK Hynix of South Korea, together with US-based Micron, control more than 90% of the global DRAM market, and all three have steered capacity toward high-bandwidth memory (HBM), the stacked DRAM that feeds AI accelerators.

HBM is far more lucrative and far more capacity-hungry, consuming roughly three times the wafer space of standard DRAM per gigabyte by Micron’s own reckoning. The commodity memory inside phones and laptops is being crowded out as a result, and SK Hynix has already said its output is effectively sold out for 2026.

Why the memory chip shortage runs through Asia

That allocation choice has moved prices violently. TrendForce expects conventional DRAM contract prices to climb 55 to 60% in the first quarter of 2026 alone, with NAND flash up by about a third, while Gartner projects DRAM rising roughly 47% across the year.

Micron has stepped back from the consumer memory market to concentrate on enterprise and AI buyers, and hyperscalers such as Microsoft and Amazon have locked in supply through multi-year commitments and direct funding of fab expansion. Apple, among the world’s largest memory buyers, has been reluctant to sign the same prepayment deals, leaving it exposed as contracts reset higher.

Cook said Apple would use its balance sheet to help expand supply, while ruling out building memory factories of its own. The near-term cost is already visible at home: the Mac mini’s entry price rose from US$599 to US$799 in May, Macs and iPads are expected to move first, and research firm TechInsights estimates the iPhone 18 Pro would need to cost roughly US$270 more simply to hold its current margin.

Cook’s quiet nudge toward China

The more striking part of the interview was geopolitical. China’s memory makers, led by CXMT in DRAM and YMTC in NAND, account for an estimated 5 to 10% of the market and sit at the lower end, without the advanced HBM capability the AI build-out demands. US firms would need licences to work with them under national-security rules.

Asked whether those restrictions should ease, Cook said “everything needs to be on the table” and that all supply deserved a look, a notably forward position from an executive who rarely steps into export policy. It is an awkward ask. Washington has spent the past few years tightening Chinese access to advanced chips, not loosening American access to Chinese ones, yet the supply maths is pushing Apple the other way.

PC makers, including HP and Dell, have already begun qualifying CXMT and YMTC parts to spread their risk, a quiet sign that the China-sourcing question is moving from taboo to procurement reality.

For now, the leverage sits firmly with the Korean suppliers, who are posting record profits and warning the crunch could run into 2027 and beyond. Apple’s fiscal third-quarter call around 30 July should reveal more on the margin hit, and the September iPhone 18 launch will show how much of Asia’s memory bill ends up with buyers.

Want to learn more about AI and big data from industry leaders? Check out AI & Big Data Expo taking place in Amsterdam, California, and London. The comprehensive event is part of TechEx and is co-located with other leading technology eventsclick here for more information.