Apple’s recent product event, at which it revealed its first folding iPhone, also brought an unwelcome pricing change: the company has raised the price of its iPhones by £100 across the board, including older models. The increase surprised consumers who had come to expect incremental upgrades without large base-price shifts.
Industry commentators have labelled the squeeze on component supply “RAMageddon” — a shorthand for the acute shortage of memory chips. The shortfall has been tied to rapid growth in demand for high-capacity memory by firms building out large-scale artificial intelligence data centres, which require vast amounts of RAM and related components.
The shortage has interrupted a long-standing trend of electronics gradually becoming cheaper as manufacturing scaled and component costs fell. With memory chips and other critical parts diverted to AI infrastructure, manufacturers of smartphones and consumer electronics are facing higher input costs and constrained inventories, which in turn can translate into higher retail prices.
The supply pinch underscores broader strains in global supply chains as demand shifts toward AI hardware. For consumers, the immediate impact is higher prices and potentially thinner choice among models; for the industry, it raises questions about production priorities and how quickly supply can be ramped up to meet both data-centre and consumer-device needs.
It is not yet clear when production and distribution of memory chips and related components will return to levels that ease price pressure on consumer electronics. The development will be watched closely by manufacturers, retailers and policymakers concerned about the wider economic effects of sustained component shortages.