What smart people are saying about price hikes by Apple and Xbox

In a note on Thursday, the tech megabull wrote that while Apple is known to secure low prices because of its bulk purchases, memory price increases have "forced" it to raise prices.

"We believe the company is in a strong position to increase prices without sacrificing hardware performance and risking increasing customer churn given the company's increasing focus on the higher-end consumer," Ives wrote.

Ahmed said on X that the most important part of the announcement is that Xbox said console storage and memory prices have increased more than twofold — and that the company expects another doubling by the fall of 2027.

"This is also why I'm expecting another price increase for the Switch 2 in 2027 at this point," Ahmed said on Thursday.

"The delayed price increase this year is to help build up the install base in the Switch's 2nd year," he added.

Popal said on a LinkedIn post that the latest Apple price hikes were higher than she had expected, and that might be a signal for Apple's next possible move: iPhone hikes.

"The up to $500 hikes on MacBooks will only make the likely $100-$200 hikes on the iPhones seem relatively 'reasonable,'" wrote Popal. "Apple's Genius timing and strategic move to get the consumers used to the idea and announce it come after the increases to the MACs."

"I think the days of $50 price increases are over," she added.

In a Thursday post on X, Munster said that, for the most part, a large price change leads to little change in Apple consumer demand.

"Apple's 1.5B consumers (my estimate) are locked into the ecosystem and, more importantly, get a ton of value out of the products even with the most recent price bump," he wrote.

He added: "Average life of a Mac is 4.5 years before it's traded in which means a $200 increase adds $3.70 a month to the cost of ownership."

Merritt wrote in a post on X on Thursday that he doesn't think this will be the last price hike for Apple.

"Xbox is increasing console prices by 25% in August, saying that console storage and memory prices have increased by more than 2.5x and that they expect another doubling by the fall of 2027," Merritt added.

Cheema posted on X on Thursday that the 128 gigabyte M5 Max MacBook Pro just saw a 29% price hike.

"No new products, just higher prices," said the AI startup cofounder.

"A customer of ours bought 42 of these just before the price increase - they saved $67,200," Cheema added. "If you want to run local AI, you need to secure hardware ASAP."

The world's richest man also chimed in on the price hikes on his X account. Musk posted Tim Cook's comments that the memory chip shortage had led to the biggest jump in costs "in any area in over 40 years."

"Biggest price jump in anything I've ever seen too," the Tesla CEO wrote.

Musk said that the industry was suffering from an "insane" memory chip production shortfall in the face of spiraling demand. "MUCH higher production is needed," he wrote.

Marques Brownlee said that Apple's Mac Mini price hike in May was a "warning shot" for the current wave of increases — and warned that the new prices could be here to stay.

"If I was guessing, this is a temporary price increase for as long as this memory shortage lasts, but we also have no idea how long this is going to be, so I would just consider this the new price for everything — and you can thank AI for that," the tech YouTuber said in a video posted on social media.

Mark Gurman, Bloomberg's chief correspondent covering Apple, said that it might be some of Apple's lesser-known products that are hit hardest by the price increases.

"I don't think the Mac or iPad price increases are going to be shocking or incredibly deterring to customers," wrote Gurman in a post on X.

"But the smart speaker and TV box markets are so commoditized that these HomePod and Apple TV price hikes could drive people to cheaper Google and Amazon alternatives," he said.