NUPIAO Reporter | Song Jianan
On June 25 (Eastern Time), Apple made a bold move, announcing a global price increase for its entire Mac and iPad hardware lines. What started as a storm triggered by a crunch in AI storage chips didn’t just hit Apple’s stock hard; it sent a ripple effect crashing through the entire “Apple supply chain” in secondary markets.
Apple itself took a massive hit on a single day, dropping 6.12%. That’s a staggering $263.4 billion in market value evaporated—its biggest one-day fall since April 2025, marking the lowest point in 14 months. At closing, its total market cap settled back into the $4.04 trillion range.
The impact was immediate and brutal for A-share supply chain companies. On June 26, they all opened lower and kept sliding. The consumer electronics index tumbled 2.03% in a single day. The more a company relies on Mac and iPad business, the harder they fell. Luxshare Precision, a key assembler for Apple’s Macs and iPads, closed down 8.63%, dipping as deep as 9.16% at its worst point during trading. Over 23.3 billion yuan changed hands that day, with investors clearly hitting the exit button.
Furong Technology, which makes aluminum alloy structural parts, nearly hit the daily limit down, dropping 9.80%. Huaqin Technology and Hejing Technology followed suit with declines of 7.14% and 6.97%, respectively. Goertek, Lingyi iTech, Wingtech, and Foxconn Industrial Internet saw drops ranging from 4% to 7%. Lens Technology was the exception, slipping only 0.23%, likely because their glass cover materials have less cost elasticity, making them less vulnerable to storage price shocks.
HK-listed supply chain stocks felt the pain too. Sunny Optical dropped over 9%, Futai Precision fell nearly 8%, and AAC Technologies slipped close to 6%. Meanwhile, the Hang Seng Index closed down 1.76%, and the Hang Seng Tech Index tumbled 3.41%.
Korea’s storage giants weren’t spared either. In the morning session, SK Hynix plunged up to 9.56%, while Samsung Electronics crashed 8.65%. These two behemoths control over 90% of the world’s DRAM and NAND capacity and are Apple’s core storage suppliers. Foreign capital dumped a massive 5 trillion KRW (about $3.2 billion) worth of Korean semiconductor stocks in a single day. The KOSPI index widened its drop to 7.07%, briefly triggering a 20-minute trading halt. LG Electronics, a supplier of high-end camera modules for Apple, also slid 3.8%.
Japanese component makers faced similar pressure. TDK, Apple’s battery supplier, dipped 8.2% early on. Kioxia Storage fell more than 12%. The Asia-Pacific IT Index dropped over 6% for the day, with the tech sector taking a collective beating.
This round of price hikes covers the entire MacBook lineup, all iPads, desktop Macs, Vision Pro, and HomePod. iPhones and Apple Watches are currently off the hook, but management hasn’t ruled out future price increases for these products.
Looking at the domestic official website, most Apple products jumped between 15% and 20%, with premium models seeing even steeper hikes. The entry-level MacBook Neo went up by 900 yuan, rising from 4,599 to 5,499 yuan. The bestseller, MacBook Air, saw a 1,500 yuan jump to 9,999 yuan. The 14-inch MacBook Pro added 2,500 yuan, breaking the 15,999 yuan mark. The high-end Mac Studio version saw a one-time increase of 3,500 yuan.
iPad prices rose across the board too. The base model iPad went up by 800 yuan to 3,799 yuan, the iPad Air jumped 1,200 yuan, and the iPad Pro leaped from 8,999 to 10,799 yuan.
A staff member at Apple’s Sanlitun flagship store in Beijing told NUPIAO that they only found out about the price hikes after getting off work yesterday. Both the store and the official site updated prices today. When asked if customers who had already added items to their cart before the hike could still buy them at the old price, the staff replied, “It’s really unfortunate, but you’ll have to pay the new price. If you’re interested, we can look into trade-in offers or discount programs.”
Regarding the impact on foot traffic, the staff noted that with the college entrance exams just finished, many students and parents have been visiting the store to try out devices, so there hasn’t been a noticeable drop in visitors yet. As for whether iPhones and Apple Watches will follow suit, the staff said they had no idea and were waiting for an official announcement.
It wasn’t just Apple. Microsoft also announced on June 25 (local time) that starting August 1, they will be raising Xbox console prices globally. The 512GB Xbox Series S will go up by $100 to around $500, the 1TB version by $150, and the entry-level Xbox Series X will start at roughly $750.
Microsoft explained that the hike is due to skyrocketing costs for key components. “We hoped to avoid another price increase and spent the last few months working with suppliers on various solutions,” they stated. “Unfortunately, storage and memory prices for the consoles have surged by over 2.5 times, and we expect them to double again by Fall 2027.”
Data from third-party firm TrendForce paints a grim picture. First-quarter contract prices for general-purpose DRAM jumped 93-98% quarter-over-quarter, while NAND flash rose 55-60%. By the second quarter, DRAM climbed another 58-63%, and NAND surged 70-75%. Spot market prices actually shot even higher, with DDR5 16GB memory spot prices jumping over six times this year alone.
The root cause? Major storage manufacturers like Samsung, SK Hynix, Micron, and Kioxia shifted their production focus. They moved massive amounts of mature wafer fabrication capacity away from consumer SSDs and mobile storage to meet the urgent demand for AI server-grade HBM (High Bandwidth Memory) and high-layer enterprise 3D NAND. This left very little room for consumer-grade storage.
Goldman Sachs previously predicted that the storage chip shortage would drag on until 2028. With AI accelerators computing faster than storage can transmit data, bandwidth and capacity have become the main bottleneck for next-gen AI models. While the 2017-2018 cloud data center boom saw shortages lasting two years, Goldman analysts believe this time, the scarcity in the AI data center era could last much longer.
