Apple raises AppleCare+ prices as the memory shortage spreads from hardware to services

Apple has raised the monthly cost of AppleCare+ subscriptions by 50 cents for Macs and iPads, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday, extending a wave of price increases that has already hit the company’s hardware lineup. Annual plans went up by five dollars. The increases apply only to new sign-ups, meaning existing subscribers will keep their current rates.

Under the updated pricing, a monthly AppleCare+ plan for a 13-inch MacBook Air rose from roughly seven dollars and 50 cents to roughly eight dollars, while the annual equivalent went from roughly $75 to $80. The change is modest on its own but follows a pattern that has been accelerating since Tim Cook warned in June that price increases were “unavoidable” because of the global memory chip shortage.

Last month, Apple raised prices on iPads, Macs, Vision Pro headsets, HomePod speakers, and Apple TV set-top boxes, with some products climbing by hundreds of dollars. The $599 Mac Mini was discontinued entirely earlier this year after DRAM costs made its price point unsustainable. Apple is expected to raise iPhone prices as well when it rolls out new models in September, which would bring the increases to its largest revenue source.

AppleCare+ covers customer support, accidental damage repairs, and battery replacements for Apple devices. Last year, the company launched AppleCare One, a separate service priced at roughly $20 per month that covers up to three devices under a single plan. The AppleCare+ increase does not appear to affect AppleCare One pricing.

The underlying pressure is the same force driving hardware price increases across the technology industry. AI data centre construction has consumed a dominant share of global memory production, pushing DRAM prices up sharply and squeezing the supply available for consumer electronics. Memory prices have roughly quadrupled over the past three quarters, according to Counterpoint Research, as Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron have redirected capacity toward the high-bandwidth memory used in AI servers.

A 50-cent monthly increase on a service plan is unlikely to change buying behaviour on its own, but it signals that Apple’s cost pressures are no longer confined to the hardware side of the business. When the company that built its services division into a $100 billion annual revenue stream starts passing along component cost increases to warranty subscriptions, the memory shortage has reached every layer of the stack.