A global supply crisis in memory chips is leaving Apple's best-selling laptop "extremely hard to find."
For Li Mu (a pseudonym), who is preparing to buy a MacBook Air for the back-to-school season, this summer feels exceptionally long. Recently, he placed an order on Apple's official website for a 13-inch M5-chip MacBook Air with 24GB of memory. The order showed an estimated delivery date between September 1st and 8th. However, when he called several authorized Apple retail stores, multiple locations responded that they "currently have no stock and cannot guarantee a restock time."
Li Mu's experience is not an isolated case. Times Finance noted that complaints about MacBook Air shortages are widespread across multiple social platforms. Official website delivery times have lengthened, physical stores are struggling to find available stock, and delivery times for some orders have been pushed back to September.
"In first-tier cities like Beijing and Shanghai, any available unit gets snapped up almost instantly," a salesperson from an official Apple channel told a consumer on August 7th, adding that MacBook Air shortages have been evident since May, becoming more pronounced during the graduation and back-to-school seasons.
During the recent Q3 FY2026 earnings call, Tim Cook acknowledged that the company indeed faced supply constraints in the quarter ending in June, primarily affecting Mac, and to a lesser extent, iPhone and iPad. Looking ahead to the September quarter, he noted that due to reduced supply chain flexibility, the impact of supply constraints is expected to increase significantly quarter-over-quarter.
The supply crisis is prompting Apple to accelerate its search for new sources of DRAM (Dynamic Random Access Memory).
On the evening of August 9th, citing reports, China News Service mentioned that Apple is testing memory chips from ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) in its iPhone and MacBook product lines to alleviate memory shortages triggered by the AI boom. On August 10th, Times Finance reached out to CXMT Technology (688825.SH) for verification but had not received a response by the time of publication.
Tight Stock, Delivery Delays: MacBook Air Remains "Hard to Find" Even After Price Hikes
Times Finance visited multiple Apple Stores and authorized retailers in Shenzhen and learned that since early July, the supply of M5-chip MacBook Air models has noticeably tightened. Initially, deliveries for higher-memory configurations were delayed, which quickly spread to more versions.
Taking the 13-inch MacBook Air as an example, the 24GB unified memory version was out of stock at all three Apple Stores in Shenzhen; even the base 16GB version only had limited stock at one store.
"The higher-memory versions of MacBook Air are basically all out of stock. Placing an order now means waiting at least 4 weeks for delivery," said a salesperson at an Apple authorized retailer, adding that the difficulty for stores to obtain stock has increased significantly, with the limited available base models mostly being previous inventory. "The higher the memory configuration, the longer the wait time."
Times Finance checked Apple's China website and found that as of August 7th, both the 13-inch and 15-inch M5-chip MacBook Air models showed significant delivery delays. The shipping time for the 16GB unified memory version had extended to 2-3 weeks, while the wait time for the 24GB and 32GB versions reached 4-6 weeks.
While online deliveries are delayed, physical stock is equally scarce.
On social media, anxiety over snagging a MacBook Air continues to ferment. Many users have shared experiences of visiting every Apple Store in their city without finding their desired model; refreshing the Apple website daily has become routine for many potential buyers.
Judging from the current delivery situation, both the 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Air models are experiencing varying degrees of delay. Several consumers who have already placed orders reported that configurations with higher unified memory, like 24GB and 32GB, generally have longer wait times.
Long known for its relatively lower price and slim design, the MacBook Air has always been Apple's most attractive product during the back-to-school season. Unlike the Mac Studio and Mac Pro targeted at professional users, the MacBook Air is tasked with expanding the Mac user base and attracting students and general consumers. Apple also calls it "the world's most popular laptop."
The persistent shortage has, to some extent, disrupted Apple's back-to-school marketing rhythm.
Apple's back-to-school promotions in the US market typically start in June each year, but this year were delayed until July 16th; the launch in the Chinese market was also about a week later than usual. Promotional pages in some markets placed the base 14-inch MacBook Pro in a more prominent position, with special notes indicating related products are "subject to availability."
More notably, this shortage is occurring after Apple has already raised product prices.
When the M5 MacBook Air was released in March, Apple increased the base storage capacity from 256GB to 512GB and raised the starting price from $999 to $1099. Compared to directly raising the price for the same configuration, this "capacity upgrade with price increase" somewhat softened consumer perception of the price hike, but it also increased the flash memory consumption per device.
In June, Apple raised prices again for several products, including MacBooks and iPads, by approximately 18% to 25%. A price increase notice obtained by Times Finance from an Apple authorized retailer in Shenzhen showed that the starting prices for MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, and MacBook Neo increased by 3000 yuan, 1500 yuan, and 900 yuan, respectively; the starting prices for iPad Pro and iPad Air also increased by 1800 yuan and 1200 yuan, respectively. Consequently, the MacBook Air has further deviated from its long-held entry-level positioning.
Apple Warns of Pressure in September Quarter, Supply Constraints Impact to Expand Significantly
Behind the tight supply of MacBook Air, the global memory chip shortage is imposing unprecedented cost pressure on Apple.
"We are currently facing some pretty severe [supply] constraints. The supply chain has limited flexibility to address this issue," Apple CEO Tim Cook said during the Q3 FY2026 earnings call.
He further explained that current demand is not weakening; instead, end-user orders far exceed the supply chain's capacity, with dual constraints on the production capacity of advanced-node, self-designed chips and the supply of DRAM memory.
Surging memory chip prices are bringing unprecedented pressure on Apple. Cook described the current memory price environment as "a once-in-a-century flood," stating that prices have increased exponentially, and Apple has therefore "very reluctantly raised prices." Even before Apple announced price increases in June, Cook had made similar remarks, saying he had "never seen anything like this in any field in over 40 years."
Looking ahead to September and beyond, Cook admitted frankly: "We see memory market prices continuing to rise, which could have an increasingly larger impact on our business."
The origin of this round of global memory chip supply tightness can be traced back to 2023. Following the rise of generative AI, tech companies like Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Meta accelerated the construction of AI data centers, driving a surge in demand for NVIDIA GPUs and High Bandwidth Memory (HBM), with HBM experiencing shortages first.
Since then, supply-demand imbalances have continued to intensify. In the second half of 2025, the large-scale rollout of NVIDIA's Blackwell platform further pushed HBM demand higher. Simultaneously, AI servers also require large-capacity DDR5, enterprise-grade SSDs, and other products. Cloud service providers' concentrated construction of AI clusters caused shortages to gradually spread across the entire memory market.
HBM is essentially stacked from multiple DRAM chips, competing with DDR5 for DRAM wafer capacity. In pursuit of higher profits, Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix, and Micron prioritized expanding production of HBM and high-capacity server memory, further squeezing the supply of other DRAM products.
However, adjustments on the supply side are not easy to implement quickly. Building new wafer fabs involves not only facility and cleanroom construction but also equipment installation, process verification, and yield ramp-up. Micron expects the tight supply situation to gradually improve by 2028 but still cannot predict when supply will catch up with continuously growing demand.
Driven by surging demand from AI hyperscale cloud providers, a Morgan Stanley study from June 2026 showed that prices for memory chips like DRAM and NAND have risen to about six times their level a year ago. According to Citi Research estimates, the average selling prices for DRAM and NAND increased by 44% and 53% quarter-over-quarter, respectively, in Q2 2026.
Meanwhile, TrendForce expects that the contract prices for conventional DRAM and NAND Flash will still rise by 13%-18% and 10%-15% quarter-over-quarter, respectively, in Q3 2026.
Although Apple possesses massive purchasing scale and strong bargaining power, its advantages are weakening in this round of memory competition. In the past, Apple could prioritize securing components through prepayments, long-term procurement agreements, and a multi-supplier system; now, cloud computing giants also have strong cash flow and are willing to pay higher prices for AI infrastructure.
Against this backdrop, Apple has clearly expressed its intention to expand its sources of DRAM supply.
Currently, the global DRAM market is dominated by three main suppliers: Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix, and Micron Technology. Cook said on the call that having more suppliers would help improve supply, but whether it would ease price pressure remains unclear. "Apple is evaluating all supply options."
In the short term, supply shortages have not significantly impacted Apple's performance. Apple reported Q3 revenue grew 16.4% year-over-year to $109.42 billion, exceeding market expectations of a 15.5% increase. Among them, iPhone sales grew 21.7% year-over-year to $54.25 billion, a record high for any third fiscal quarter for Apple; Mac sales also grew 28.7% to $10.35 billion.
However, if shortages persist, negative impacts will gradually become apparent.
Apple CFO Kevin Parekh stated that the impact of supply constraints on the September quarter is expected to be significantly larger than in the June quarter and will affect iPhone, Mac, and iPad. Based on this, Apple expects year-over-year revenue growth for the September quarter to be between 9% and 11%. The upper end of this range is below the Wall Street consensus expectation of 12%.
This article is from the WeChat public account "Times Finance APP" (ID: tf-app), author: Pang Yu
