Apple cuts iPhone 18 Pro component orders weeks after launch, Nikkei reports

Apple has told some suppliers to cut production of components for the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max, barely a month after the phones went on sale, according to an exclusive report published Friday by Nikkei Asia. The outlet, citing people familiar with the supply chain, said October orders for Pro-model components were trimmed by at least 15 percent from Apple's original requests, with one supply-chain account putting the reduction as high as 20 percent.

The cut is a rare, early signal of trouble for Apple's newest flagship line, which launched in September to a round of double-digit price increases that the company has pinned squarely on the global memory chip shortage.

The numbers

The iPhone 18 Pro starts at $1,199 and the iPhone 18 Pro Max at $1,299, each $100 more than the iPhone 17-generation models they replaced, according to Apple's own pricing page. The increase tracks closely with a forecast the research firm TrendForce published in August, which estimated that the bill of materials for the 256-gigabyte iPhone 18 Pro would rise roughly 38 percent year over year, driven almost entirely by memory. TrendForce said memory's share of that bill of materials jumped from about 10 percent a year earlier to roughly 34 percent in the third quarter of 2026, and it expects that share to exceed 40 percent in the first half of 2027.

Nikkei's sourcing did not specify how many units the cut represents or which component suppliers are affected, and MacRumors, which reviewed the same reporting, noted that Apple has made no public comment on the figures.

How a memory shortage became a pricing problem

The order cut is the latest consequence of a memory-chip squeeze that chipmakers trace to the data-center buildout for artificial intelligence, which has pulled DRAM and NAND production toward server and AI customers and away from consumer electronics. Apple has been unusually direct about the toll this has taken on its own business. On the company's fiscal third-quarter earnings call in July, in what turned out to be his final call as chief executive, Tim Cook described conditions in the memory market in stark terms, a warning that Apple's own earnings release that quarter underscored with a sharp gross-margin hit tied to component costs.

Apple chose to absorb part of that cost rather than pass all of it on to buyers, a strategy TrendForce described as deliberately cutting into gross margin to keep prices from rising even further and to protect shipment volume. The $100 increase that reached consumers was, by that account, the smaller side of the hit; the retail price users saw represents only a portion of what memory actually added to the phone's production cost.

Who is affected

The most direct effect falls on Apple's component suppliers across Taiwan and the broader Asian electronics supply chain, who must now absorb lower near-term order volumes after ramping up for the September launch. For Apple, the cut arrives during the first major product cycle under John Ternus, who became chief executive on September 1, succeeding Cook, and it complicates what is normally the company's most important sales quarter. Nikkei's reporting also pointed to Apple's own strategy as a contributing factor: the company split this year's iPhone lineup, holding back the standard iPhone 18 and a new iPhone Air model for a spring 2027 release rather than launching the full lineup together in the fall, which left the Pro models to carry the holiday quarter largely on their own at a noticeably higher price.

Consumers shopping for a new phone this holiday season are, in effect, on the other side of the same cost pressure that is squeezing Apple's suppliers. A buyer choosing between a $1,199 iPhone 18 Pro and whatever carrier promotions are on offer is weighing a price increase that both Apple and outside analysts attribute almost entirely to a chip shortage well outside Apple's control, rather than to new features. That dynamic is not unique to Apple: PC makers have cited the same memory-cost spiral in their own pricing and, this week, in weaker shipment figures of their own.

"On the pricing front, you know, we reluctantly raised prices. I would say we did it because we're in what I would characterize as a 100-year flood on memory pricing, with exponential increases in memory prices," then-chief executive Tim Cook told analysts on Apple's July earnings call, explaining the increases that preceded the order cuts.

Reaction

Wall Street analysts had flagged softening demand before Nikkei's report. GF Securities analyst Jeff Pu had already lowered his combined production estimate for the Pro lineup, citing lukewarm pre-order wait times and constraints tied to the new variable-aperture camera, while analysts at Jefferies had pointed to shorter delivery windows in several major markets as an early sign that Apple could trim orders as soon as October. Apple has not issued a statement responding to the Nikkei report or to the analyst commentary that preceded it.

What happens next

The order cut does not, on its own, establish that full-year iPhone sales will fall, and Apple will not report fiscal fourth-quarter results, which include the bulk of the launch quarter, for several more weeks. But it does suggest the company's bet on raising prices rather than fully protecting margin has not yet paid off in volume, at a moment when memory suppliers show no sign of easing their pivot toward AI customers. With TrendForce projecting memory's share of iPhone production costs to keep climbing into next year, Apple faces the same choice again when it plans pricing for the delayed standard iPhone 18 and iPhone Air, due in spring 2027: raise prices further, cut margin again, or find another way to absorb a cost increase that, on the industry's own numbers, is still accelerating.