With Tim Cook stepping down, Apple has achieved record sales, but a chip shortage is looming

apple I mentioned A record quarter on Thursday. yet Outgoing CEO Tim Cook He warned that some storm clouds are gathering in the form of memory chip supply issues that may affect business in the near future.

“Today Apple is proud to announce our best quarter ever, with revenue of $111.2 billion and double-digit growth in every geographic segment,” Cook said during Thursday’s earnings call. “iPhone achieved record revenue for the March quarter, fueled by this exceptional demand for the iPhone 17 lineup.”

Less optimistically, Cook noted that Apple spent more on memory chips in March than in previous quarters, although the company’s costs were offset by its ability to sell. Inventory Inventory. But he was careful, Expectation are “significantly higher memory costs” in June onwards – the likes of which could result in an “increased impact” on the business.

Cook was referring to what is commonly called “Ramageddon“The trend of the AI ​​industry gobbling up memory chips with such incredible enthusiasm is leading to shortages. This is driving up hardware prices. Apple is primarily a hardware company, so this is clearly not great news for its core products.”

Notably, the chip shortage affected the iPhone. Despite the strong sales numbers Apple touted on Thursday, it happened Previously reported Random access memory (RAM) costs quadrupled – impacting phone production costs and putting John Ternos, Apple’s incoming CEO, in an unenviable position.

One possible outcome could be that Apple iPhone prices increase. “There’s a little less flexibility in the supply chain right now to get more parts.” Cook told Reuters Thursday.

Ternus, who served as Apple’s senior vice president of hardware engineering, was on Thursday’s earnings call and praised Cook. “In my view, Tim is one of the greatest business leaders of all time,” Ternos said. “Being CEO is an incredible honor, and it means a lot to me to have Tim’s confidence.”

It’s clear he’s going to have a hard time working when he starts work on September 1st. But he will still have Cook’s supply chain experience to fall back on for a while. Cook will become CEO.