As Storage Costs Bite, Apple Hikes Prices Of iPads & MacBooks In India
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Amid soaring global memory and storage costs, big tech giant Apple has hiked the prices of its many key products in India. However, iPhones have so far been spared from the price increases.
The hikes impacted several of its products such as MacBooks, iPads, Apple TV and HomePod devices. Apple’s online store briefly went down yesterday and came back online with the updated price changes.
“The consumer electronics industry is facing an unprecedented challenge… The rapid expansion of AI data centers has created an extraordinary surge in demand for memory and storage. We have never seen a component price increase this much, this quickly,” Apple said in a statement to CNBC.
The iPhone maker also reportedly said that it has “reached a point where we need to begin raising prices on a number of products,” adding that it was working to find solutions.
As a result, Apple has increased the prices of many of its products between 14% to 88%. While the entry-level MacBook now costs ₹79,900 as against ₹69,900 previously, the flagship MacBook Pro 14-inch now comes with a price tag of ₹2.39 Lakh as against ₹1.69 Lakhs.
On similar lines, the price of the base iPad model was hiked by ₹15,000 to ₹34,900, while iPad Mini and the 13-inch iPad Pro (M5) now cost ₹49,900 (up ₹20K) and ₹1.29 Lakhs (₹70K hike), respectively.
On the home entertainment front, the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) has increased the prices of HomePod Mini by ₹5,000 to ₹15,900, while the cost of HomePod has jumped by ₹12,000 to ₹44,900. The prices of the 64 GB and 128 GB variants of Apple TV 4K now stand at ₹25,900, up from ₹14,900, and ₹31,900, up from ₹16,900, respectively.
The announcement of the price hikes led to Apple stock shedding more than 6%, as of 1:52 AM IST. Posting its worst day in over a year, the bloodbath wiped out hundreds of billions of dollars in market capitalisation of the company.
Notably, this comes barely a week after Apple CEO Tim Cook told a publication that price increases were “unavoidable”, driven by a surge in the cost of memory and storage chips.
Largely to blame for the price increases has been the massive demand for RAM and NAND flash by companies building data centers. As a result, memory manufacturers are prioritising supplying high-margin AI data center chips, which has resulted in consumer electronics makers facing tight supply and severe cost inflation.
Joining the bandwagon, Microsoft also raised the prices of its Xbox console prices amid soaring hardware costs. As per reports, the price of Xbox Series S 512 GB console has been raised to $500 from $400 previously, while the flagship Xbox Series X 1 TB Disc now costs $800 as against $650 earlier.
The price hike is expected to have a direct financial bearing on Apple India, which has been scaling up its retail presence in the country. Earlier this year, the company recently opened its sixth retail store in the country, launching a new outlet in Mumbai’s Borivali.
Last month, CEO Cook said that it was wonderful to see how Apple had grown in India in recent years, terming the country a “huge opportunity” for the tech giant. As per the company, India witnessed double-digit growth in Mac revenue in Q2 FY26, while iPad sales also saw strong traction in the country during the quarter.
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