US Officials Oppose Apple Plan to Buy Chinese RAM

US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has publicly opposed Apple's strategy to purchase RAM from Chinese manufacturers like CXMT and Yangtze Memory Technologies. Apple hoped to use these off-the-shelf components to mitigate severe memory price inflation. Currently, US trade restrictions require American firms to secure licenses before sharing product details with these Chinese suppliers. While Apple can technically buy standard, unmodified parts without sharing proprietary data, Lutnick stated there must be alternative solutions rather than "great American companies using Chinese memory."

This political pushback occurs amid a severe global DRAM shortage. The three primary US-approved memory manufacturers have shifted their production focus toward lucrative data center clients, driving up prices for consumer electronics. These vendors do not expect to bring new manufacturing capacity online until 2029 at the earliest. Meanwhile, competitors like HP and Acer already use CXMT memory in devices sold outside the United States. However, a bipartisan Senate effort aims to tighten restrictions on CXMT, which could completely block Apple from purchasing even basic commodity memory from these entities.

The supply bottleneck has already forced Apple to delay device deliveries, halt sales of certain high-memory configurations, and raise some product prices by up to 25%. Industry analyst Ming-Chi Kuo warned that Apple has scaled back its hardware shipment plans for 2026, with reports indicating that shortages are even impacting the supply of Apple silicon processors. In Japan, consumer behavior has already shifted; refurbished iPhone sales more than doubled on the Nicosuma marketplace following Apple's price hikes in July.

For hardware developers and enterprise IT procurement managers, this geopolitical standoff signals prolonged supply chain instability and rising hardware costs. Practitioners cannot rely on a quick resolution to the memory crisis and must prepare for extended device lifecycles. With new US-approved supply delayed for years, organizations may need to budget for higher device acquisition costs, explore leasing options, or turn to refurbished hardware to maintain operations without breaking their budgets.