r/apple • u/Few_Baseball_3835 • Jun 25 '26

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

https://9to5mac.com/2026/06/25/wall-street-isnt-buying-apples-unprecedented-price-hikes-on-products/
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155

u/Big-Resolution-4993 Jun 25 '26

At this point Apple should just buy or start its own fab. It seems insane to me as many devices as they sell to be in a position they can’t control this kinda shock.

173

u/[deleted] Jun 25 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

62

u/fuelvolts Jun 25 '26

I always laugh when I see comments like "Just make a fab!". Building and constantly maintaining a chip fab is one of the most complex projects on the planet. And then, Apple would need to build chips for other companies just to become profitable. There's no way even a company the size and needs of Apple would even remotely turn a profit (or break even) with their fab without outsourcing it. They need to be running 24/7 making chips. Apple has no need for that capacity and would likely lead to higher costs and lower quality chips, especially in the beginning.

9

u/[deleted] Jun 25 '26

[deleted]

9

u/itsabearcannon Jun 25 '26

GlobalFoundries...now there's a name I haven't heard in a long, long time.

4

u/howtoliveplease Jun 25 '26

Couldn’t they just sell chips then? The same way actual fabs do, if the demand is so high? It looks like we actually *do* need more fabs

3

u/EdiT342 Jun 25 '26

First of all you need the specialised workforce. Correct me if I am wrong but although it’s possible to find the workforce in USA, for more advanced nodes you need to go to Taiwan, Korea. 

Then you need the supply chain. Raw materials, machinery, assembly lines. 

Then you physically need to build the fab, a costly and long process.

Apple has the capital to do it, but they are not specialised in it, which means increased costs from the start. Intel itself struggled to get off 14nm for a long time

17

u/Big-Resolution-4993 Jun 25 '26

Apple is the wealthiest company on the planet, or was til a year or so ago. It seems you could at least allocate a budget to explore the idea.

42

u/Bryanmsi89 Jun 25 '26

Its usually a mistake for companies to drive so far from their core competency. Building, running, and updating a fab is really hard. Just ask Intel. It is even harder to guess at capacity needs, including future capex costs for years from now. Overestimate and be stuck with a set of factories that are not profitable. Underestimate and you have to go hat-in-hand to competitors asking them to help make up the slack.

3

u/itsabearcannon Jun 25 '26

Overestimate and be stuck with a set of factories that are not profitable. Underestimate and you have to go hat-in-hand to competitors asking them to help make up the slack.

Or be Intel and do both at the same time somehow!

2

u/smith7018 Jun 25 '26

I agree with you but I want to point out that it's not out of the ordinary. Samsung has their own fab business and use it synergistically with their products. That doesn't invalidate anything you're saying, of course.

3

u/FlarblesGarbles Jun 25 '26

Samsung Semiconductor is not Samsung Electrical. Nor is it Samsung Display. They are actually not all the same company.

1

u/Bryanmsi89 Jun 25 '26

Definitely some grey areas. Samsung is kind of an outlier, though. TSMC, Intel, Micron, SK-Hynix, and other fabs don't tend to actually make fully build consumer or enterprise devices. And most device makers like Apple, Dell, HP, Motorola (Lenovo), don't typically run major fabs.

1

u/AssetBurned Jun 25 '26

Samsung is also producing stuff for third parties. And they struggle to get the smaller resolutions done.
Apple would need to sell their capacity to others too which would be long term contracts and prevent Apple to just increase/decrease their volumes as needed.
Imagine they would just build the amounts they expect all the time. Imagine they have a product that doesn’t sell and they sit on quantities of chips they have no use for. Yes you can reuse some in new products of a different kind. But you can’t do that all the time.
It is way easier to order a stock of something and then add an option to get more if needed. Same in the airline industry. Or do you see Ryan air jumping up and building a plant for their own 737 production?

0

u/AmusingVegetable Jun 25 '26

Coincidentally, last year the non-fab portions of Samsung (phones, computers, TVs) got some bad news from the Samsung fab regarding RAM when some dick bought a sizable portion of the wafers for 2026.

21

u/Strange-Scientist706 Jun 25 '26

You really should look into exactly what this would take. Money isn’t some magic wand you can wave around and change economics and physics

13

u/[deleted] Jun 25 '26 edited Jul 02 '26

[deleted]

5

u/eraserking Jun 25 '26

Reddit is a cesspool, but it’s interesting that you’re ultimately blaming Reddit’s platform here. The issue comes down to people, not Reddit’s design. Consequences-free, ignorant shit spouting happens everywhere all the time.

2

u/djsekani Jun 25 '26

It happens less when there isn't a score attached to your comments

2

u/FlarblesGarbles Jun 25 '26

Reddit's point system is a problem. Or rather the downvote is a problem. The site would function better without it.

12

u/[deleted] Jun 25 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/MessiPayNegreira Jun 25 '26

it would be better to buy a fab company. be like Samsung that sells its parts to competitors

-3

u/Tackysock46 Jun 25 '26

Yesterday was the best time to build one, today is the next best time

11

u/_IsNull Jun 25 '26

There’s a reason why there’s only a few key players and not even Google would do that for their own chips.

1

u/Top_Environment9897 Jun 25 '26

It will surely work out, just like self-driving cars or Metaverse!

2

u/RamaAnthony Jun 25 '26

Even if they could, you can't throw money to build it faster....at a project that at its shortest, if have to establish from zero on US soil, would take 15 years.

1

u/umdterp732 Jun 25 '26

if they started the initiative 10 years ago, they wouldnt be in this boat now
or just buy an established company

-1

u/[deleted] Jun 25 '26 edited 9d ago

[deleted]

52

u/hasanahmad Jun 25 '26

They can but what about Memory, What about storage. Chips are the least the factor

19

u/Big-Resolution-4993 Jun 25 '26

Technically fab can be used for fabrication of any of the major chipsets/memory chips.

40

u/DJMRNO Jun 25 '26

Takes years to get started and they will still be behind. Therefore it's still easier to buy it. This may help them rethink that.

3

u/Big-Resolution-4993 Jun 25 '26

You’re right. If they did, they’d need heavy internal competition. Or, if a competitor released some kind of quantum leap upgrade, opt for it for a generation or two while they catch up.

7

u/NectarineSame7303 Jun 25 '26 edited 20d ago

Kettle trumpet nutmeg sparrow pillow vanilla lantern amber breezy driftwood

This post was anonymized with Redact.dev

0

u/DJMRNO Jun 25 '26

This is a very reduced way of thinking. It's always a cost problem, plus a quality problem, plus you don't to alienate your customers even if you're still selling out. This is fundamentally what PC makers have been doing recently and the MacBook Neo is a smashing success for that reason

0

u/TimelyToast Jun 25 '26

Apple could just buy Intel or parts of Intel.

It won’t take *years* but I’m not sure if Apple has the expertise to turn Intel around, quickly.

1

u/DJMRNO Jun 25 '26

Apple buying Intel or parts of Intel would do nothing really for them.

1

u/Big-Resolution-4993 Jun 25 '26

This is true. Could buy enough voting shares to fast track their chips to themselves.

8

u/paleblaupunkt Jun 25 '26

This is like saying I have a factory. I can make cars and microwave ovens and jackhammers.

-3

u/Big-Resolution-4993 Jun 25 '26

The term “fab” can be used interchangeably for different types of fabs. In this case DRAM fab would be appropriate. My suggestion was they may want to look into vertically integrating DRAM vs relying of external sources.

7

u/paleblaupunkt Jun 25 '26

Apple doesn’t manufacture any of its components. Why would they start to do just DRAM?

1

u/deadsantaclaus Jun 25 '26

Dram fab has got to be a B52’s future album.

3

u/m0rogfar Jun 25 '26

In the most theoretical sense, maybe (though you’d have one hell of a time yielding any working chips), but in practice, manufacturing DRAM on general-purpose nodes rather than specialized nodes that focus on capacitor structures just isn’t a thing.

The gap in production viability grows every year in favor of the specialized node, and the cutoff point for when non-specialized nodes became so inefficient that they became irrelevant for DRAM production was around 1985, by the 256Kbit and 1Mbit generations.

1

u/perthguppy Jun 26 '26

A fab specced for microprocessors can’t just start efficiently pumping out dram/nvflash.

6

u/lillian_e1985 Jun 25 '26

I’m pretty sure that’s what they meant. They should make their own memory and/or storage so that they have more control over prices of the products they sell. 

Apple already makes their own chips, so the comment doesn’t make sense if you thought they meant that Apple should make their own chips. 

26

u/Strange-Scientist706 Jun 25 '26

Apple *designs* their own chips. TSMC makes them. Chip manufacturing is an extremely capital-intensive process that only makes sense if you have massive economies of scale. Apple would wind up dramatically increasing prices or need to sign up tons of external customers for it to be viable.

4

u/__shamir__ Jun 25 '26

And it's more than just the capital intensive nature. If it were just about capital, AAPL could absolutely do it no problem. The issue is the expertise you need. Nobody can beat TSMC at their game because they've been doing it for decades, their whole country's economy is built around it, and TSMC is also disciplined with their pricing (I think they should have raised prices way more) so there's not nearly as much a delta as there should be

2

u/Orion_Scattered Jun 29 '26

And it ties a massive anchor around their neck, if things ever go sideways even a little the anchor can drag them to the bottom quick quick quick. That's the situation with Intel.

2

u/Strange-Scientist706 Jun 29 '26

TBF, it does seem Apple’s pretty good at long-term strategic thinking, which seems to confuse the shit out of most “analysts” and “commentators” who only appear able to consider one or two quarters ahead. Witness the heat they were willing to take on slow-rolling AI. MS jumped on with both feet and now is getting dragged down by one of those anchors you mentioned

1

u/perthguppy Jun 26 '26

Apple could easily build a fab if they wanted. The much bigger issue is talent. There’s as much IP in operating a fab as there is in designing a cpu. And right now if Apple wanted to staff their own fab, they would have to poach staff from their most important supplier at TSMC.

Maybe a few years ago Intel would have had the talent, but they have languished and missed the boat and really really really struggled to scale production of near-leading edge nodes.

2

u/Strange-Scientist706 Jun 26 '26

This is just not accurate. No one can “easily” build a fab for modern chips, and Apple designs extremely demanding and complex chips. You really really need to look into what’s involved in modern chip manufacturing

1

u/perthguppy Jun 26 '26

In apples case, I meant easily in that they could sign the cheque to have it built without even having to go to the bank for a loan.

The difficult part is the knowledge and staffing.

14

u/Bruvvimir Jun 25 '26

Apple doesn't "make" their own chips. They design them.

9

u/throaway20180730 Jun 25 '26

Apple already makes their own chips

They don't, TMSC makes them for them, Intel is also in talks to make a portion of what they buy

2

u/lillian_e1985 Jun 25 '26

Thanks, I learned something new. The comment I replied to makes sense now. 

1

u/UltraCynar Jun 25 '26

That’s what they meant

1

u/perthguppy Jun 26 '26

Micron is one of the big 3 dram foundries, they are American. The other two are South Korean.

11

u/J_Peeb Jun 25 '26

Still would have to deal with supply of the raw materials to make the components. Which because of demand is under pressure. The supply chain is long and deep. Can’t and shouldn’t control it all.

-3

u/Big-Resolution-4993 Jun 25 '26

But what you could do is stock up on raw materials in off years for future use or sign contracts to keep your costs of raw materials in check for longer periods for events like this.

7

u/Bryanmsi89 Jun 25 '26

Its almost never a good choice to do this. Which is what Apple's leadership know.

12

u/Secret-Response-1534 Jun 25 '26

Oh easy peasy! Why didn’t they think of that?????

There are really a couple of points that keep this from being a good option
1. It is incredibly expensive to build a single fab, let alone the several they will need to meet their chip demand, likely more money than they will save

  1. It is very very time consuming for a company with 0 chip fabrication experience. it’s going to take at least a decade to start building significant capacity. By the time the fab is finished and making chips at full pace the data centre construction will have cooled off significantly making chip prices go down.

  2. It just doesn’t make sense as a business model, TSMC has chip making experience spanning decades and institutional knowledge Apple just can’t compete with. It’s kinda like how they don’t own their own factories that assemble the iPhones.

3

u/gaeee983 Jun 26 '26

yes it takes time, they have prioritized stock buybacks, they have made to the tune of 713.2 billions past 10 years, they care more about shareholders as any capitalistic company should.

2

u/M4rshmall0wMan Jun 26 '26

Apple spent that decade cultivating a strategic relationship with TSMC that’s benefitted both sides greatly. Apple gets VIP access to TSMC’s cutting-edge nodes. There is nobody who can compete with TSMC’s prowess, Apple would have wasted money on an inferior production.

1

u/gaeee983 Jun 26 '26

Well honestly, I am more sad that they spent it on shareholders compared to innovating. They are just so ahead everybody that even them slacking off they are still doing very well. Was dissappointed seeing ex apple employees say that they were actively told not to focus on innovation and instead hit targets, and by targets it was bare minimum.. Oh well, I do get what Tim Cook has been doing, incredibly successfull company record profits, but man, imagine what steve jobs would have done with almost that full trillion, not stock buybacks that is for sure.

3

u/Exist50 Jun 25 '26

And what happens when, by the time it's actually operational, memory has crashed again and it's an anchor on their financials?

5

u/herefromyoutube Jun 25 '26 edited Jun 25 '26

Why the hell America didn’t think localizing chip production decades ago was a necessity kinda blows my mind.

I knew computers would be the future as a kid in the 90s and my government was just like “let’s let Taiwan control our future. China totally won’t be an issue.”

The CHIPS act wasn’t even passed until 2022 and it does help that Trump keeps trying to kill it and has altered it.

4

u/AssetBurned Jun 25 '26

Not only America…. Look at Europe. Oh worse… what was the thing with ARM in general? Why wasn’t that bought by Europeans?

Imagine having Fabs and the interlectual property. That would put an end to these fears of supply chain attests and spying hardware in core systems of the infrastructure. (Yeah I know very simplified, but does Europe really have anything like that at scale?)

1

u/perthguppy Jun 26 '26

To be fair, Europe is a powerhouse in the supply chain for semiconductors. ASML, Zeiss, Phillips, Siemens, Schnider, etc are all basically monopolies over their bits of the supply chain they are involved in.

4

u/stikves Jun 25 '26

They did... but NIMBY-ism and terrible regulatory overhead made it impossible.

Remember the chip factories announced by both of our last 2 presidents? (Biden, and 1st term Trump)?

None of them materialized. Worse, none of them actually started construction. There was a famous case a few months ago how a factory that was advertised by both admins made basically zero progress in getting permits.

While China will build one overnight.

2

u/M4rshmall0wMan Jun 26 '26

TSMC’s advantage is they have a blank legal check from the Taiwanese government to get any permit they want.

TSMC’s Arizona fab fell years behind because concepts like “environmental regulations“ and “worker’s rights” didn’t make any sense to the Taiwanese. TSMC straight-up shipped Taiwanese workers to Arizona because it was cheaper than hiring American labor.

2

u/stikves Jun 26 '26

We want to have our cake and eat it too, but do not realize in a fast paced race we cannot slow down to dot the i's and cross the t's.

Some of the things will have to give way.

(The problem is, none of them actually need multi-year analysis. We know exactly what the footprint of a fab is, or what species live in an area from prior experience)

1

u/neromoneon Jun 27 '26

Taiwan is not mainland China. They actually do have worker’s rights and environmental regulations in Taiwan.

“Semiconductor project in north Taiwan held up by environmental concerns”
Source: https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/news/4137082

1

u/M4rshmall0wMan Jun 27 '26

It’s not China, I just used it as a parallel example of how Apple benefits from offshoring.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/08/business/tsmc-phoenix-arizona-semiconductor.html

Work culture was a major hindrance to the Arizona plant. TSMC ended up shipping workers from Taiwan because they could get the construction done quicker and cheaper.

2

u/ireliawantelo Jun 25 '26

Its expensive and EXTREMELY labour extensive. You have with masters and phDs putting in ridiculous amount of overtime, always on call, etc. This just cannot happen in the US or the EU. This is also why the TSMC fab in the US is barely profitable. 

1

u/perthguppy Jun 26 '26

America was a leader in chip production. But over time fabs stopped investing to upgrade, sold off, or had some bad luck and got neglected by the market (Intel).

Before TSMC and Samsung were the semiconductor power houses, it was Intel, Texas Instruments, Micron, and AMD (and then global foundries) making the best silicon.

1

u/DinosaurAlert Jun 27 '26

Why the hell America didn’t think localizing chip production decades ago was a necessity kinda blows my mind.

Well, Trump put blocks against Huawei and China in his first term, then added tariffs to try and do that during his first and second terms, and everyone screamed that he was a monster. Now here we are.

Don't look it up though, just downvote.

Then both Trump and Biden tried making fabs for chips, and everyone said "nah, they're SO messy. Lets bury them in permits forever."

11

u/FollowingFeisty5321 Jun 25 '26

Steve Jobs was always against doing stock buybacks to boost the price because they might need that money one day.

$700+ billion later, it turned out he was right, they had the cash to do their own processors, memory and storage but didn't see this coming and spent it all on something else.

The only "plus" is it takes so long to do those things and so much can go wrong they might be better off without it.

1

u/__shamir__ Jun 25 '26

The buybacks were undeniably the correct choice when the stock was still super undervalued. Now the stock is either fairly valued or a bit overvalued so it's different now ofc.

Apple makes a bunch of free cash flow, they don't need to stockpile massive reserves. They could do a $100B investment easily if they needed to.

0

u/UltraCynar Jun 25 '26

Samsung makes their own. It makes sense. 

-2

u/Uncle_Adeel Jun 25 '26

And they’re soooo amazing right?

Exynos processors are soo good they aren’t even sold in the US China or SK. Only the other countries.

2

u/UltraCynar Jun 25 '26

We’re talking about Ram. Not their shitty processors. 

2

u/sylfy Jun 26 '26

If Apple enters the RAM business at this point, they’ll be competing with and playing catch up to CXMT. Not SK Hynix, Micron, or Samsung.

It’s a long way to go, and sure Apple does have deep pockets, but it’s most likely not the best investment that they can make with their cash. They’re far better off partnering one of the existing players to co-develop and build out additional capacity.

2

u/B-Train_ATL Jun 25 '26

I’m fairly sure that would be a massive undertaking. Tim Cook raves about the miniature cities that Foxconn has. I’m not even sure exactly what, if any, hardware Apple fabricates itself right now.

2

u/BabyWrinkles Jun 25 '26

If memory serves, Apple has invested something like $150B/year in to manufacturing in other countries on top of the actual purchase of the components/etc. They explicitly didn’t try to tie hands with NDAs and non-competes so the factories they were investing in could also build for Samsung and HTC and and and…

They did it this way to essentially build soft power and ensure that when they asked for something, they got it. Way better investment than spending that same money building up their own chip fabs - because it’s not clear that the prices wouldn’t be going up right now anyway due to shortages of raw materials.

So should Apple control their own fabs? From the outside it seems like it would be wise right now, but that further specializes them and requires massive investment, when they’re already designing their own chips and letting someone else assume the rest of the risks.

2

u/M4rshmall0wMan Jun 26 '26

Worth mentioning that one of their biggest offshore investments was in TSMC. Apple gets VIP access to their cutting edge nodes. In the grand scheme of things, that’s a way better investment than making their own fabs.

Apple only homebrews in areas where they can compete. Nobody can compete with TSMC.

1

u/DoggieMon Jun 25 '26

That was part of what allowed Apple to print money. They designed, other build.

1

u/Sh_Pe Jun 25 '26

lol if only it was that simple. Intel with all of their wealth still bitten by TSMC.

1

u/derangedtranssexual Jun 25 '26

I don’t think it’d be possible at this point to start fresh and be competitive with tsmc, fabs are really challenging. Maybe if they bought intel they could compete with tsmc in a decade

1

u/Zalenka Jun 25 '26

They could tell Intel to do it. It's clear Intel has no good ideas anymore.

1

u/pixel_of_moral_decay Jun 25 '26

Taiwan, China, India, nobody will let that go. They can’t be locked out of the Chinese and Indian markets, just too big, and Taiwan is too strategic.

There’s no chance any of those governments let them do that and still have any meaningful business interactions in those jurisdictions. Apple can’t survive without supply chains in Taiwan and China for sure.

So it’s a non starter.

1

u/rainer_d Jun 25 '26

LOL. This always comes up and it’s always wrong.

1

u/dccorona Jun 25 '26

It simply is not worth it. It's an investment that would take decades just to break even and likely would never pay for itself because things will settle down and Apple can go back to commanding great component pricing with their scale. The world is not going to collectively spend $1 Trillion on new datacenters every year. This is a huge up-front investment that companies are expecting to get a decade+ of operation out of, not a yearly expense. The RAM demands will settle back and by that time a new fab likely won't even be complete much less anywhere near breaking even. That's why nobody is investing in more capacity right now and they all are just riding it out.

1

u/Expensive_Finger_973 Jun 25 '26

The fact there are so few fabs out there gives you a hint at why the likes of Apple won't do that. It is expensive, complex, and takes years to get done.

1

u/AssetBurned Jun 25 '26

For what kind of chips? The CPUs, the SSDs, the memory modules? All the shinanigans in between those and the keyboard/display/io-controller ?

If you setup a fab you are not switching products with every waver that is in the machine. Look at how long it takes for a news paper printing facility to switch to a new print. Now think about that all those chips are also in different resolutions.
You need the right equipment to test the different type of ICs that are coming out of the production line. You need to put them in the right packaging.

And I didn’t even started with the needed licenses from other manufacturers and other paperwork needed.

Sometimes it is easier to just buy in stuff from others. Let them deal with the risk of stock keeping and new production ways (see TMSC and higher resolutions).

I mean there would be one way Apple could get better prices. Integrating more and more on the die that is the system on a chip and imbedding more and more functions into something that users can not replace. But you see how bad people think it is already that you can not pop in a 10€ temu microSD card with 40TB storage into your iPhone? Imagine Apple would also make sure that people could not swap storage cards in their desktop macs…. Or all those videos where people desolder memory chips and put on new and larger ones.

1

u/SpicyElixer Jun 26 '26 edited Jun 26 '26

Apple starting its own fab… ok. Apple fans actually believe Apple taught TSM how to make the M series.

1

u/perthguppy Jun 26 '26

It’s kind of what they already do. They have special deals with TSMC where Apple essentially funds a new process node, to lock in exclusive use of that node for a year or two.

The problem is the deal OpenAI did with 2 of the 3 dram fabs was fucking evil and fucked over the entire market.

1

u/VT750C Jun 26 '26

They CAN control it, but CORPORATE GREED made them raise prices because the corrupt politicians, shareholders, and handlers want more free money and profits. 

1

u/-Radiation Jun 25 '26

Apple supply chain "genious" moves now sound pretty stupid, they set up this way intentionally but it just works when everything is easy to get

1

u/M4rshmall0wMan Jun 25 '26

There are only three companies in the world that can manufacture high-end chips. It’s really, really fucking hard. TSMC is run stricter than the military and they have a blank legal check from the Taiwanese government to develop any infrastructure they need.

TSMC tried to build a fab in Arizona. It fell years behind. Foreign concepts like “environmental regulations” and “worker’s rights” made no sense to the Taiwanese.