As the global tech industry becomes embroiled in an arms race for AI infrastructure, the massive demand for computing power is relentlessly consuming memory and storage device production capacity. This AI-driven supply chain crisis is now also affecting the prices of storage products sold through Apple's retail channels.
Bloomberg News points out that Apple has recently quietly raised the prices of many external storage devices in its Apple Stores and on its official website, with some increases exceeding 100%.
The price of an exorbitantly priced external hard drive: SanDisk's 4TB SSD has doubled.
Apple has updated the prices of external hard drives in its physical retail stores and on its official website. For example, the price of a 4TB SSD from SanDisk used to be around $500, but now it has jumped to nearly $1200. The price of a 1TB SSD used to be around $120, but now it has also surged to over $350.
Although Apple has the power to set the final product price in its own channels, its original strong bargaining power in the supply chain has obviously become limited due to the overall memory shortage. This is because suppliers are facing soaring production costs, and Apple's procurement costs have to be significantly increased as well. Ultimately, these costs will be passed on directly to end consumers.
It's not just a price issue, but a comprehensive "supply disruption crisis."
The impact of this storm is not just on "more expensive" prices, but more seriously on "shortage".
Because upstream chip manufacturers have allocated the vast majority of their production capacity to the more profitable AI infrastructure construction, the supply of consumer-grade storage devices has been severely squeezed. Consumers who go to Apple's website or physical stores to buy external hard drives often find the shelves empty.
This is not just a problem for Apple alone. Major e-commerce platforms, including Amazon, will find that the current inventory of SSDs and traditional mechanical hard drives (HDDs) is extremely low and prices are rising. This means that consumers are mostly directly affected by the global shortage of memory and other components.
Analysis of viewpoints
Over the past few years, consumers have become accustomed to the golden age of NAND Flash (flash memory) prices plummeting year after year, with "terabyte-level capacity at bargain prices." However, the rise of generative AI has completely disrupted this supply-demand balance. When companies like OpenAI, Microsoft, and Meta frantically buy high-capacity enterprise-grade SSDs to train models with mega-parameters of data to handle massive amounts of training data, the capacity squeeze effect naturally impacts the consumer market.
More worryingly, as most market analysts have pointed out, this is definitely not a short-term phenomenon. Until foundries and major memory manufacturers (such as Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron) successfully ramp up new capacity sufficient to meet AI demands, this painful period of "high prices and shortages" is likely to last for a considerable time. Creators who recently need to expand their Mac storage or purchase external hard drives to back up video footage may now have to grit their teeth and accept these brutal market prices, or seek alternative storage solutions.
