Apple's Mac lineup will soon span a wider price range than ever, from the new $599 MacBook Neo to a rumored top-of-the-line MacBook "Ultra" expected later this year. However, new research suggests the broader laptop market could be heading for a painful price adjustment.
According to TrendForce, surging memory and CPU costs could push mainstream laptop retail prices up by nearly 40% in 2026. The firm modeled a laptop with a $900 MSRP and found that DRAM and SSD (normally around 15% of a device's bill of materials) have ballooned to over 30% following several quarters of sharp price increases. That alone could force retail prices up by more than 30% if brands want to hold their margins.
Intel has raised prices on entry-level and older-generation laptop CPUs by more than 15%, notes the report, with further hikes planned for mainstream and higher-end platforms in the second quarter. When combined, memory and CPU could end up accounting for 58% of laptop component costs, up from roughly 45%.
Apple designs its own silicon, which gives it considerable insulation from Intel-driven CPU volatility. The MacBook Neo's A18 Pro chip, for instance, is produced by TSMC under Apple's direct supply agreements. But Apple is not immune to memory market pressures – DRAM and NAND flash costs affect Macs across the line, from the Neo's fixed 8GB of RAM to the high-capacity configurations in the MacBook Pro.
Just last week, Apple removed the 512GB memory upgrade option when purchasing a Mac Studio, with the machine now maxing out at 256GB. The latter option also got a price rise – it used to cost $1,600 to go from 96GB to 256GB on the high-end M3 Ultra machine, but now it costs $2,000.
TrendForce notes that "tier-one brands" with deep supplier relationships are most well-positioned to deal with the price squeeze. That bodes well for Apple, but killing off the Mac Studio upgrade option shows it's not completely invulnerable to broader market pressures.
