(Credit: Brian Westover/PCMag)
In Apple’s quarterly earnings call on Thursday, CEO Tim Cook said Mac mini and Mac Studio shortages could last for months due to unexpected AI demand.
Since the beginning of the year, demand for Mac desktops has gone through the roof as users turned to these devices to run AI agents, such as OpenClaw, locally. Apple wasn’t expecting such demand and, as a result, didn’t have the supply to match it.
“Both of these [mini and Studio] 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.
The shortage started grabbing headlines early last month. Apple’s online store wasn’t accepting orders for some high-end configurations of Mac Studio and Mac mini. A couple of weeks later, even the base $599 Mac mini ran out of stock.
It may “take several months to reach supply demand balance,” Cook said on Thursday.
The delay could also be caused by an industry-wide shortage of memory chips. AI companies are absorbing a large share of global RAM and storage supply, forcing almost all PC manufacturers to raise prices.
Apple has kept prices steady so far, but things could change soon. Cook said Apple spent more on memory chips last quarter than in previous quarters and expects memory prices to rise in upcoming quarters. Whether the rising costs get passed on to customers remains to be seen.
That aside, Apple had a record-setting March quarter, with revenue of $111.2 billion. The iPhone remained the company’s primary revenue driver, bringing in nearly $57 billion. Cook attributed the success to “extraordinary demand for the iPhone 17 lineup.” At close to $31 billion, Apple's services and subscriptions came in second.