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Wall Street isn’t buying Apple’s unprecedented price hikes on products

As promised a week ago, Apple just increased prices across a range of product lines. While rising RAM costs are to blame, according to Apple, Wall Street isn’t too impressed with the move.

Apple’s stock is trading down 5% today, a 15.49-point drop, after increasing prices on existing Macs, iPads, and other products.

Apple first signaled that it planned to raise prices on its products last week when Apple CEO Tim Cook delivered the news to the Wall Street Journal in an interview.

Cook, who is leaving the CEO position but staying at Apple as executive chairman of the board in September, didn’t specify which products would see prices increases or when.

But today, Apple took down its online store, a move usually reserved for new product releases, only to bring it back with increased prices across several product lines.

For now, Amazon still sells affected Apple products like the MacBook Neo and MacBook Pro at the original prices with existing discounts also in place.

While Apple’s stock price is taking a hit today, Apple’s move does two things for the future.

Top comment by Matthew Ryan

Liked by 67 people

Sorry...I don't buy it. Apple has plenty of money. They didn't -need- to pass this cost on to consumers...they -chose- to. They already have outrageous margins, and they should have just eaten the loss. These price increases only make them look bad, regardless of why.

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First, incoming Apple CEO John Ternus won’t inherit the decision to increase prices due to the ongoing global memory constraint.

Second, new Apple products that replace existing products may have higher memory needs to deliver Siri AI.

Connecting the price increases to ongoing supply constraints now helps take the heat off new products that also need more RAM and will cost more to deliver new features.

Despite today’s stock hit, Apple is still trading up 37% compared to this time last year.

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Avatar for Zac Hall Zac Hall

Zac Hall is a Senior Editor, covering Apple, apps, and AI. He joined 9to5Mac in 2013.