Apple’s Memory Supplier Blames Aggressive Pricing For Today’s Shortage

Micron’s chief business officer stopped short of naming Apple directly, but the implication in his remarks to The Wall Street Journal was clear: buyers who pushed hardest for lower prices during the memory industry’s previous slump helped choke off the investment that might have prevented today’s shortage. “We told a couple of the customers who were being very aggressive with pricing at that time that this is not constructive,” Sumit Sadana said. Micron is one of Apple’s memory suppliers, providing DRAM and NAND flash for iPhones, Macs, and iPads, and Apple has a long reputation for extracting favorable terms through its purchasing contracts.

Sadana’s account adds an uncomfortable layer to a story Apple has been telling largely on its own terms. According to Sadana, industry investment was largely shut down in 2023 because margins turned negative, and the capacity that went unbuilt is a direct reason Mac and iPad prices are rising now alongside a broader shortage Apple itself has called a “hundred-year flood.”

The timing of Sadana’s comments made them harder to ignore. They arrived just hours after Apple announced price increases across nearly its entire hardware lineup, with Apple TV seeing a notable jump, and products spanning the Mac, iPad, HomePod, and Apple TV lines all moving higher. The iPhone, Apple Watch, and AirPods were left untouched.

Apple’s stock closed down 6% that day, its worst single-day performance in more than a year, erasing roughly $265 billion in market value.

Tim Cook had framed the situation a week earlier in the same publication, describing the shortage as unlike anything he had seen in over four decades. His explanation pointed to AI hardware demand as the primary culprit, arguing that high-bandwidth memory needed for AI servers was now competing directly with consumer products for a shrinking supply pool. What Sadana’s remarks quietly suggest is that the supply pool was already narrower than it needed to be, partly because of how aggressively some buyers, Apple very likely among them, had squeezed suppliers when prices were falling.