Apple expects memory costs to rise further in the December quarter after increases in the September quarter, with product price rises providing some relief, the company’s chief executive said.
The increases would follow a quarter in which existing inventory and cheaper components other than memory partly offset higher memory costs. Apple has also raised prices across several product lines.
“What we’re seeing with memory pricing right now is unprecedented,” the chief executive said in earnings-call remarks carried on Yahoo Finance’s Sozzi Unleashed, published Nov. 3.
The remarks described costs that had already increased and a further rise that Apple expects in the next quarter. They did not put a figure on the expected increase or specify how much the offsets would cover.
“In the September quarter, we did see higher memory costs as compared to the June quarter, which were partly offset by the benefit of carry-in inventory and lower costs on certain non-memory components.”
That inventory gave Apple some protection from the higher prices during the September quarter. The company identified lower costs elsewhere in its products as another offset, without naming the components.
“For the December quarter, we expect even higher memory costs,” the chief executive said. Product price increases were among the factors expected to partly offset those costs.
Apple changed prices on many products, including Mac computers and iPads, at the end of June, followed by iPhones in September. The remarks did not specify the size of those price changes.
The executive said those increases “provided some offset.” The remarks left open how much additional relief Apple expects from pricing in the December quarter.
Separately, Palantir chief executive Alex Karp described a rapidly expanding market in earnings-call remarks also carried in the broadcast. “This is a market that is growing so rapidly. We don’t need the people who aren’t convinced.”
Karp also discussed Palantir’s relationship with artificial intelligence company Anthropic. He said the companies work together effectively, while describing concerns among some customers about sharing their business advantages with an AI provider.
“Some people want that approach,” Karp said. Others, he said, are concerned about “their alpha being transferred to them,” using a term for an advantage over competitors.
Karp said results Anthropic discusses are often already available in Palantir’s software applications. He gave no numerical comparison or timetable in those remarks, leaving the scale of that overlap unspecified.
His comments described cooperation alongside competing approaches to serving customers. They did not include a new spending commitment or a financial target for the relationship.
