Facing the music: Apple, Samsung, and memory cost inflation

Samsung users are still digesting big price increases on the Galaxy S26 series, particularly as they mean some models are now more expensive than equivalently capable iPhones. That’s bad news for everyone, of course, but this is unlikely to get any better for some time to come, with memory giant Micron warning that the memory supply/demand imbalance is going to stick around for at least another year, and probably more. The AI-driven memory price hikes are applying an inflationary squeeze across the entire industry. It’s not the only pressure being felt, as businesses at every scale feel the pain of fuel price and energy cost increases. All this might be a little easier to take if the leaders of the frontier firms creating the memory supply imbalance weren’t also warning us that the tech they’re making is an existential threat to humanity. It makes the financial sacrifice of costlier consumer electronics as a direct impact of that tech invention feel a lot less palatable. What about Apple? Morgan Stanley analyst Erik Woodring believes Apple now has the most exciting product roadmap it has enjoyed for years, but shares the Wall Street consensus that margins will continue to be squee…

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