Why Nvidia spooked Apple investors... again

Why Nvidia spooked Apple investors... again

Brian Sozzi · Executive Editor

Thu, August 27, 2026 at 5:05 PM GMT+3 2 min read

• AAPL -0.07%
• NVDA +6.96%

Apple (AAPL) investors were just reminded of how challenging the bottom-line outlook for the iPhone maker is in the near term, thanks to surging memory chip prices.

"So the price increases [on memory chips] are astronomical. In some cases, you have secured, we call it capacity, but you actually don't know how many you're getting, and at what price," Nvidia (NVDA) CFO Colette Kress told Yahoo Finance moments after the tech giant's earnings call on Thursday.

Apple issued cautious revenue guidance for the current quarter in late July, largely because the company can't source enough memory chips to meet demand. It's a problem outgoing CEO Tim Cook expects to persist. Profit margins were also under a great deal of pressure in the most recent quarter compared to the preceding quarter due to higher memory chip prices.

"On the pricing front, we reluctantly raised prices, I would say," Cook said on his earnings call. "We did it because we're in what I would characterize as a 100-year flood on the memory pricing, with exponential increases in memory prices."

Apple shares fell by less than 1% on Thursday on the Nvidia commentary. The stock is down about 6% in the past month.

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The memory chip market has tightened considerably as demand for high-bandwidth memory (HBM) and advanced dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) used in AI servers continues to outpace supply.

Companies such as SK Hynix (SKHY), Samsung Electronics (005930.KS), and Micron (MU) have largely sold out their premium AI memory capacity through much of 2026 as customers, including Nvidia (NVDA), Microsoft (MSFT), Amazon (AMZN), and Meta (META), race to build AI infrastructure.

The shortage has pushed memory prices sharply higher and given suppliers greater pricing power after several years of weak industry conditions. Experts expect memory supply to remain constrained into 2027, creating a favorable backdrop for the industry's largest producers.

"The industry backdrop of supply constraints and memory cost headwinds are offsetting the positive narrative relative to demand, with supply constraints worsening into the September quarter from the June quarter and being concentrated in access to leading edge processors," JPMorgan analyst Samik Chatterjee wrote in a note on Apple. "Meanwhile, memory headwinds and its impact on product gross margins is escalating into the September quarter despite significant price increases taken already on a range of products including Macs and iPads."

Brian Sozzi is Yahoo Finance's Executive Editor, host of the 'Power Players With Brian Sozzi' podcast and a member of Yahoo Finance's editorial leadership team. Follow Sozzi on X @BrianSozzi, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Tips on stories? Email brian.sozzi@yahoofinance.com.

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