Apple Hikes MacBook and iPad Prices in India by up to Rs 70,000

Apple raised prices on its Mac and iPad lineup in India by up to Rs 70,000 on Thursday, with the company blaming a surge in memory and storage chip costs that AI data centers have set off. The base 14-inch MacBook Pro with the M5 chip and 16GB of RAM, launched in March at Rs 1,69,900, now lists at Rs 2,39,900 on Apple’s India store, according to Apple’s India statement on the AI-driven memory crunch.

The revised prices stretch across nearly every Mac, iPad, HomePod, and Apple TV model Apple sells in the country. The iPhone, the company’s biggest revenue line in India, is the one category it has not touched in this round.

The New India Price List

The MacBook Pro lineup absorbed the sharpest increases. The base 14-inch MacBook Pro with the M5 chip and 16GB of RAM, launched at Rs 1,69,900, now lists at Rs 2,39,900, a Rs 70,000 jump. The M5 Max variant of the same laptop climbed from Rs 3,99,900 to Rs 4,99,900, a Rs 1 lakh move.

MacBook Air and MacBook Neo buyers also face new tags. The MacBook Air with the M5 chip went from Rs 1,19,900 to Rs 1,49,900, and the 15-inch Air moved from Rs 1,44,900 to Rs 1,79,900. Even the entry-level MacBook Neo, Apple’s most affordable laptop, climbed Rs 10,000 from Rs 69,900 to Rs 79,900.

The iPad family saw similar markups. The flagship iPad Pro with the M5 chip crossed Rs 1,39,900 from its launch price of Rs 99,990. The 11-inch iPad Air with the M4 chip rose Rs 25,000 to Rs 89,900, the iPad mini gained Rs 20,000 to Rs 69,900, and the entry iPad 11th-generation model climbed from Rs 39,900 to Rs 49,900.

Apple Says It Has Run Out of Room

Apple framed the increase as the moment its long-running effort to absorb component costs ran out of road. In a statement to the Times of India on Thursday, the company said the consumer electronics industry was facing an unprecedented challenge as the rapid expansion of AI data centers created an extraordinary surge in demand for memory and storage.

We have never seen a component price increase this much, this quickly. We have shielded our customers from these increases so far, but we have now reached a point where we need to begin raising prices on a number of products, including today’s increases for iPad and Mac.

An Apple spokesperson, in the same statement to the Times of India, said the company was working tirelessly to find solutions but acknowledged the environment had left little choice but to begin passing some of the cost burden on to consumers.

The statement echoes what Tim Cook had been signalling for weeks. In an exclusive interview with The Wall Street Journal on June 17, the Apple chief executive said price increases were unavoidable because the situation around memory chips had become unsustainable, and that the position of absorbing the climbing cost of memory and storage chips for months was no longer tenable, per Apple’s earlier June statement on memory chip costs.

Cook had already telegraphed the move on Apple’s late-April earnings call. “We expect significantly higher memory costs. Beyond the June quarter, we believe memory costs will drive an increasing impact on our business,” he told analysts at the time. The June quarter ends this week, and the India pricing reset is the first concrete reading on what that increasing impact looks like.

Investors read it as one. Apple shares fell 6.1% on Thursday, their worst single-session decline in more than a year. The size of the drop matched the size of the gap between what Apple had absorbed and what it was now asking customers to pay.

Six-Fold Memory Inflation Behind the Hike

The cause is a memory market that AI infrastructure has bent out of shape. Morgan Stanley has tracked memory chip prices climbing roughly six-fold over the past twelve months as the world’s three dominant DRAM makers reallocated capacity toward high-bandwidth memory for AI servers, per TrendForce’s Q2 2026 DRAM contract forecast. Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix, and Micron together control around 90% of global dynamic memory production, and each has shifted cleanroom space from the LPDDR and NAND chips that go into phones and laptops toward the parts that go into AI servers.

The price action has been sharp enough that Morgan Stanley has given the dynamic a name. The bank calls it chipflation, and frames it as a durable supply-demand reset rather than a typical inventory cycle that self-corrects. Sony, Lenovo, Microsoft, and Dell had already moved on price in 2026 before Apple’s reset, and Microsoft has said about $25 billion of its $190 billion 2026 spending budget stems from elevated chip costs.

• Six-fold: Morgan Stanley’s measure of memory chip price growth over the past year.
• 90%: Share of global DRAM production held by Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron.
• 98%: TrendForce’s high-end estimate of Q1 2026 DRAM contract price growth.
• 58% to 63%: TrendForce’s Q2 2026 DRAM contract price forecast.

The numbers come straight from the contract market. TrendForce reported this week that conventional DRAM contract prices will rise 58% to 63% quarter-over-quarter in Q2 2026, after a Q1 that saw contracts climb as much as 98% quarter-over-quarter. NAND flash contracts are set to rise 70% to 75% in the same window, a faster pace than DRAM for the first time in this cycle.

India Feels the Hit Harder Than Most Markets

Apple’s India pricing already starts from a higher base than its US tags, which means the absolute rupee moves land harder on buyers. The base iPad Air now starts at Rs 89,900 in India, where the same model lists at $749 in the US. The Rs 70,000 hike on the entry MacBook Pro 14-inch is a percentage move that mirrors the global hike, but a number that, in rupee terms, looks larger than the $300 the same model added in the US.

The 14-inch MacBook Pro M5 Max saw the single sharpest move in the portfolio, climbing Rs 1 lakh to Rs 4,99,900 from Rs 3,99,900. In rupee terms that is around $1,170 added to the laptop in a single revision. The Mac mini, which now lists at Rs 94,900 from Rs 59,900, also passed the Rs 90,000 mark, and the Apple TV 4K climbed from Rs 14,900 to Rs 25,900, more than a 70% increase on a single category.

Prabhu Ram, vice president at Cybermedia Research, told India Today that price increases were already showing up across multiple consumer electronics categories, and that Apple’s decision to pass costs on was a strong signal that pricing pressures have reached a level that even the most sophisticated absorption strategies cannot fully offset. Smaller players with less supply-chain leverage are likely to feel the same force more sharply, Ram said.

The broader consumer electronics market is bracing for the same. IDC forecasts the worldwide PC market to decline by 11.3% in 2026 while the smartphone market contracts 12.9%, with the pullback concentrated in lower-price segments where buyers are most exposed to component-cost pass-throughs, per the AI memory crunch feeding US inflation. Apple has, so far, held its iPhone prices flat in India, but the company has not committed to keeping them there.

iPhone Stays Put, for Now

Apple’s iPhone lineup is the one category the company has not touched in this round. The iPhone 17 continues to sell at its launch price of Rs 82,900 for the base variant on Apple’s India website, and the same holds for higher-tier models. Apple TV and HomePod models did see price hikes, but the iPhone lineup is the largest revenue category and the most visible one to Indian buyers.

The reprieve may not last long. Cook told Tim Cook’s June interview on memory chip costs that price increases were unavoidable across Apple’s lineup, not only on Macs and iPads. Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman has reported Apple is unlikely to wait until the iPhone 18 launch in September to widen the increases.

The Memory Floor That Outlasts This Quarter

The question now is whether India’s new prices hold or keep climbing. Morgan Stanley’s research team has framed the dynamic as a durable supply-demand reset rather than a temporary cycle, because the AI customers buying the bulk of new memory output have signed multi-year supply commitments with Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron. With long-term deals already locking in capacity, the spare supply that historically would have flowed to consumer device makers is not coming back this year or next.

Cook told the WSJ the resolution is structural, with memory pricing needing to return to levels consumer products can absorb. The company is willing to use its balance sheet to help bring more memory capacity online, and Cook drew a line at vertical integration, saying Apple will not build its own memory or storage factories.

IDC expects memory supply challenges to persist throughout 2026 and likely well into 2027, and SK Hynix has told analysts the memory shortfall would last through late 2027. The price list on Apple’s India store on Friday morning was the first public reading on what that crunch now costs an Indian buyer at the till.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much did Apple raise Mac and iPad prices in India?

The 14-inch MacBook Pro with the M5 chip and 16GB of RAM rose from Rs 1,69,900 at launch in March to Rs 2,39,900 on Thursday, a Rs 70,000 increase. The M5 Max variant of the same laptop climbed Rs 1 lakh to Rs 4,99,900, and the iPad Pro with the M5 chip rose from Rs 99,990 to Rs 1,39,900.

Why is Apple raising prices now?

Apple says the rapid expansion of AI data centers has driven an unprecedented surge in memory and storage chip costs. Morgan Stanley’s research team tracks memory chip prices climbing roughly six-fold over the past twelve months as the three dominant DRAM makers prioritize AI customers, and TrendForce estimates DRAM contract prices rose as much as 98% quarter-over-quarter in Q1 2026.

Will iPhone prices rise next?

Apple has held iPhone prices in India at launch levels so far, with the iPhone 17 base variant still at Rs 82,900. CEO Tim Cook has said price increases are unavoidable across Apple’s lineup, and Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman has reported Apple is unlikely to wait for the iPhone 18 launch in September.

When will memory chip prices come down?

IDC expects memory supply challenges to persist throughout 2026 and likely well into 2027, and SK Hynix has told analysts the shortfall would last through late 2027. TrendForce estimates conventional DRAM contract prices will rise another 58% to 63% in Q2 2026 after the steep Q1 increase.