Apple was surprised by AI-driven demand for Macs

Apple reported a record quarter on Thursday. Yet outgoing CEO Tim Cook warned of some gathering storm clouds in the form of memory chip supply issues that could impact business in the near future.

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

Less rosily, Cook relayed that Apple spent more on memory chips in March than in previous quarters though the company’s costs were offset by its ability to sell stockpiled inventory. But, he warned, the expectation is “significantly higher memory costs” in June and beyond — the likes of which may “drive an increasing impact” on the business.

Cook was referencing what has commonly been called “RAMaggedon,” the trend of the AI industry guzzling up memory chips with such astonishing gusto it is spurring shortages. This is driving up the prices of hardware. Apple is primarily a hardware company, so that’s obviously not great news for its core products.

Most notably, the chip shortage has impacted the iPhone. Despite the strong sales figures touted by Apple on Thursday, it has previously been reported that RAM costs have quadrupled — impacting phone production costs, and putting John Ternus, Apple’s incoming CEO in a less-than-enviable position.

One possible result may be that Apple increases prices for the iPhone. “There’s just a little less flexibility in the supply chain at the moment for getting more parts,” Cook told Reuters on Thursday.

Apple reported a record quarter on Thursday. Yet outgoing CEO Tim Cook warned of some gathering storm clouds in the form of memory chip supply issues that could impact business in the near future.

Apple’s iPhone sales and Services revenue were the stars of the show in the tech giant’s most recent quarter, but the Mac quietly outperformed — helped by growing demand for AI workloads.

Wall Street investors had expected to see Mac revenue in the low $8 billion range, but Apple reported $8.4 billion in the second quarter ended March 28 — a notable beat for a non-core segment of the tech giant’s business. In addition, investors ahead of earnings believed that Mac sales would be essentially flat year-over-year. Instead, Mac sales were up 6% on an annual basis, the company told investors. The company’s total revenue was $111.2 billion, a 17% increase from the same period last year.

Apple chalked up some of the Mac growth to recent product launches, including the well-received MacBook Neo. However, those fun, colorful computers were only on sale for a few weeks after the March 4 preorders began. Realistically, most units shipped mid- to late March, and some demand may have been pushed into April as certain models sold out.

Apple CEO Tim Cook told analysts on the company’s Q2 earnings call on Thursday that customer demand for the Neo was “off the charts” and higher than Apple had expected. He also noted that Apple set a record in the quarter for customers new to the Mac, partly due to the Neo.

Cook attributed the Mac sales growth to the use of the platform for running local AI models, like OpenClaw — something that took Apple somewhat by surprise as Mac mini and Mac Studio devices sold out in recent weeks.

“Both of these are amazing platforms for AI and agentic tools, and the customer recognition of that is happening faster than what we had predicted, and so we saw higher than expected demand,” Cook said of these Mac sales. He also noted that the Mac mini was the top-selling desktop in China — a market that’s been in an OpenClaw frenzy as of late.

Still, Mac revenue was flat on a quarter-over-quarter basis, suggesting this new demand has yet to scale. Cook said it may take Apple “several months” to reach supply-demand balance on the Mac mini and Studio models.

Techcrunch event

San Francisco, CA

October 13-15, 2026

“We’re not at the point where we’re saying this [constraint] is going to end anytime soon. And it’s not because of a problem, per se, other than we just under-called the demand,” Cook explained.

Enterprise demand for the Mac was also at play. Apple pointed to a couple of larger companies, including Perplexity, that had turned to Mac as their preferred platform for building enterprise-grade AI assistants.

He also said Apple was “supply constrained on the MacBook Neo,” and has even seen school systems, like Kansas City Public Schools, dropping Chromebooks for the Neo.

When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.

Sarah has worked as a reporter for TechCrunch since August 2011. She joined the company after having previously spent over three years at ReadWriteWeb. Prior to her work as a reporter, Sarah worked in I.T. across a number of industries, including banking, retail and software.

You can contact or verify outreach from Sarah by emailing sarahp@techcrunch.com or via encrypted message at sarahperez.01 on Signal.

View Bio

Apple was surprised by AI-driven demand for Macs

As Tim Cook steps down, Apple hit record sales — but a chip shortage looms

As Tim Cook steps down, Apple hit record sales — but a chip shortage looms

Discussion (0)