If you need new phone or laptop, buy it today. Not tomorrow, not next week. Today.
On Thursday night, Apple announced a major price hike on its products, joining others in a trend that has seen prices of gadgets rise sharply. It also sends a signal that tech price hike is here to stay. You will do well to adjust your purchase plans accordingly.
After Tim Cook made it official last week, a price hike from Apple was just a matter of time. Only the scope of it wasn’t clear. On Thursday the company bumped up prices across several categories and the scope became clear. It’s substantial, the kind that makes even the well-heeled tighten their belts. At least in India, the price increase in Apple products ranges from low of 14 per cent for the MacBook Neo to nearly 90 per cent for the Apple TV with ethernet port.
Of late, we have become accustomed to price hikes in phones and laptops, and in gadgets in general. Yet, the Apple hike on Thursday night was like a punch in the gut. On the morning of Friday when I woke up I was still thinking about it. And the more I thought about it, the more I recalled a quip made by British Foreign Secretary Edward Grey in August 2014 as he looked at Europe, which was primed for the big war. “The lamps are going out all over Europe, we shall not see them lit again in our life-time,” he had famously said.
The price hike that Apple has announced is not temporary. In fact, it might just be the beginning of a period where all gadgets are going to be expensive, month after month and year after year, breaking the pattern from the past when technology used to get cheaper. The prices are not going to come down anytime soon, even though Apple is “working tirelessly to find solutions.” That is because demand for RAM and storage (read SSDs) is right now crazy due to AI data centres that big tech companies are building.
Fuelled by billions of dollars in investment, Big Tech is burning money on AI hardware. Consumer tech companies cannot do it. Not even Apple, that has historically managed its supply chain with the finesse of an orchestra conductor. "This is a hundred-year flood," Cook recently told The WSJ as he talked of demand and supply mismatch for components. "I've never seen anything like it in any area in over 40 years.”
If Cook, a supply chain wizard, cannot manage it, what hope mere mortals have.
So, where does that leave us, the consumers, the people who purchase and use phones, laptops, and other gadgets? In a quandary for sure. To navigate, we may have to change the way we buy devices.
Buy it today. If you want. And if you can.
A few days ago someone in my office asked me for a buying recommendation. The person is using an old iPhone, which is now running on fumes because the battery is depleted. The battery health is below 80 per cent. I asked, “Can you continue with your phone until September? Because if you can then you should get the iPhone 18 Pro when it launches.”
Now, I am not certain about that suggestion. Although iPhone prices have not been increased for now — though they may happen anytime — it is almost certain that the new iPhones in September will come at significantly higher prices. The iPhone 18 Pro in itself may end up having a starting price of Rs 1.6 lakh.
The wait is no longer a buying strategy in the gadget market. If you want a new phone, a new laptop, anything new that has memory and storage chips inside it, now is the best time to buy. Now is going to be the best time to buy for the foreseeable future, and by that I mean at least until 2028.
It’s not just Apple. Almost all major phone companies in India, from OnePlus to Xiaomi to Samsung to Oppo, have increased the prices of their existing phones in the last few months. On models where the prices have not been increased, they have let the stock run out and have not replenished it. Instead of keeping the older phones in the market, they have introduced new phones that have the same or slower chipsets with the same or less memory but at higher prices.
It is the same in the laptop segment. Prices of good machines have trended upwards, in some cases significantly. What would have cost Rs 1 lakh a year ago, now costs closer to Rs 1.5 to Rs 2 lakh as companies like Dell, HP, Asus and others have bumped up the prices.
Every smart gadget is getting expensive
Almost everything with a smart chip is more expensive in 2026 compared to how it was, for the same performance and similar hardware, in 2024 or 2025. It is continuing to trend upwards because, as Elon Musk said on X in reply to a post about RAM demand and supply mismatch, “the production shortfall (of RAM) relative to demand is insane. MUCH higher production is needed.” For now, that much higher production is not coming as memory makers — Micron, SK Hynix and Samsung — make hay while the sun is shining on their products.
This makes NOW the best time to buy anything you might need. For example, if you hurry you may snag a MacBook Air or iPad at an older price today from your local store. For example, the MacBook Air M5 now costs Rs 149,900. But some stores are still selling it with an older price of Rs 1,19,900, along with a few bank discounts.
Similarly, Mac mini M4, which now costs Rs 94,900, is still available at some offline stores at a price of Rs 59,900. On this older stock, you may even end up getting some bank offers and others deals, which too are going to slowly evaporate. Already, if you look at e-commerce sites, the deals on smartphones and laptops are no good. The discounts are bad compared to what we would see earlier.
None of this means you should do panic shopping. But if you need something, and can afford it, get it now. Don’t wait for a sweater deal, or some price cut, or some new launch. Unless you are good at winning lotteries, there are no sweater deals coming your way. And new launches will invariably be much more expensive relative to what they will offer in terms of functionality and performance.
After Tim Cook made it official last week, a price hike from Apple was just a matter of time. Only the scope of it wasn’t clear. On Thursday the company bumped up prices across several categories and the scope became clear. It’s substantial, the kind that makes even the well-heeled tighten their belts. At least in India, the price increase in Apple products ranges from low of 14 per cent for the MacBook Neo to nearly 90 per cent for the Apple TV with ethernet port.
Of late, we have become accustomed to price hikes in phones and laptops, and in gadgets in general. Yet, the Apple hike on Thursday night was like a punch in the gut. On the morning of Friday when I woke up I was still thinking about it. And the more I thought about it, the more I recalled a quip made by British Foreign Secretary Edward Grey in August 2014 as he looked at Europe, which was primed for the big war. “The lamps are going out all over Europe, we shall not see them lit again in our life-time,” he had famously said.
The price hike that Apple has announced is not temporary. In fact, it might just be the beginning of a period where all gadgets are going to be expensive, month after month and year after year, breaking the pattern from the past when technology used to get cheaper. The prices are not going to come down anytime soon, even though Apple is “working tirelessly to find solutions.” That is because demand for RAM and storage (read SSDs) is right now crazy due to AI data centres that big tech companies are building.
Fuelled by billions of dollars in investment, Big Tech is burning money on AI hardware. Consumer tech companies cannot do it. Not even Apple, that has historically managed its supply chain with the finesse of an orchestra conductor. "This is a hundred-year flood," Cook recently told The WSJ as he talked of demand and supply mismatch for components. "I've never seen anything like it in any area in over 40 years.”
If Cook, a supply chain wizard, cannot manage it, what hope mere mortals have.
So, where does that leave us, the consumers, the people who purchase and use phones, laptops, and other gadgets? In a quandary for sure. To navigate, we may have to change the way we buy devices.
Buy it today. If you want. And if you can.
A few days ago someone in my office asked me for a buying recommendation. The person is using an old iPhone, which is now running on fumes because the battery is depleted. The battery health is below 80 per cent. I asked, “Can you continue with your phone until September? Because if you can then you should get the iPhone 18 Pro when it launches.”
Now, I am not certain about that suggestion. Although iPhone prices have not been increased for now — though they may happen anytime — it is almost certain that the new iPhones in September will come at significantly higher prices. The iPhone 18 Pro in itself may end up having a starting price of Rs 1.6 lakh.
The wait is no longer a buying strategy in the gadget market. If you want a new phone, a new laptop, anything new that has memory and storage chips inside it, now is the best time to buy. Now is going to be the best time to buy for the foreseeable future, and by that I mean at least until 2028.
It’s not just Apple. Almost all major phone companies in India, from OnePlus to Xiaomi to Samsung to Oppo, have increased the prices of their existing phones in the last few months. On models where the prices have not been increased, they have let the stock run out and have not replenished it. Instead of keeping the older phones in the market, they have introduced new phones that have the same or slower chipsets with the same or less memory but at higher prices.
It is the same in the laptop segment. Prices of good machines have trended upwards, in some cases significantly. What would have cost Rs 1 lakh a year ago, now costs closer to Rs 1.5 to Rs 2 lakh as companies like Dell, HP, Asus and others have bumped up the prices.
Every smart gadget is getting expensive
Almost everything with a smart chip is more expensive in 2026 compared to how it was, for the same performance and similar hardware, in 2024 or 2025. It is continuing to trend upwards because, as Elon Musk said on X in reply to a post about RAM demand and supply mismatch, “the production shortfall (of RAM) relative to demand is insane. MUCH higher production is needed.” For now, that much higher production is not coming as memory makers — Micron, SK Hynix and Samsung — make hay while the sun is shining on their products.
This makes NOW the best time to buy anything you might need. For example, if you hurry you may snag a MacBook Air or iPad at an older price today from your local store. For example, the MacBook Air M5 now costs Rs 149,900. But some stores are still selling it with an older price of Rs 1,19,900, along with a few bank discounts.
Similarly, Mac mini M4, which now costs Rs 94,900, is still available at some offline stores at a price of Rs 59,900. On this older stock, you may even end up getting some bank offers and others deals, which too are going to slowly evaporate. Already, if you look at e-commerce sites, the deals on smartphones and laptops are no good. The discounts are bad compared to what we would see earlier.
None of this means you should do panic shopping. But if you need something, and can afford it, get it now. Don’t wait for a sweater deal, or some price cut, or some new launch. Unless you are good at winning lotteries, there are no sweater deals coming your way. And new launches will invariably be much more expensive relative to what they will offer in terms of functionality and performance.
