The iPhone 18 conversation so far has been about money. Bigger battery, heavier chassis, a price that is widely expected to creep once September arrives. All real, all worth watching.
There is a bigger question sitting underneath all of it, though, and it is not how much the phone costs. It is whether Apple can build enough of them.
Ming-Chi Kuo, the analyst with the deepest sources in Apple’s supply chain, reckons Apple could receive 10% to 20% fewer A20 chips between the second half of 2026 and the first quarter of 2027. That window is the iPhone 18 launch, dead centre.
What Kuo Is Actually Warning About
Kuo’s argument is that the memory story has been misread. Everyone is treating it as a pricing problem, Apple paying more per chip and passing it on. Kuo thinks the real issue is supply security, as in whether the parts physically exist to buy at any price.
The culprit is AI. Data centre demand is pulling memory capacity away from consumer electronics, and Kuo reckons up to 20% of it could shift out of the consumer market through 2027. The specific pinch point for the iPhone is LPDDR, the low power memory that sits alongside the processor, and the squeeze there is enough on its own to dent A20 supply by a fifth.
The A20 chip is the engine of the entire iPhone 18 line. Every model needs one. Fewer A20s coming off the line does not mean a slightly slower phone. It means fewer phones, full stop.
Why Memory Is Strangling Silicon
This is where it gets a bit counterintuitive. A chip shortage caused by a memory shortage sounds like two separate problems, but modern Apple silicon blurs the line. The processor and the memory are packaged tightly together, and if the memory side is starved, the finished part is stuck no matter how many processors Apple has fabricated.
And the memory side is genuinely starved. Contract prices have jumped somewhere in the region of 50% to 60%, driven by exactly the same AI data centre demand that is soaking up capacity. When a hyperscaler will pay almost anything for memory, a phone maker waiting for its allocation ends up further back in the queue than it is used to.
What a Shortage Looks Like at Launch
Do not picture empty Apple Stores. A 10% to 20% shortfall rarely shows up as nothing on the shelf. It shows up as friction.
That means tighter launch day stock, shipping estimates that slip into weeks rather than days, and the Pro models being the first to go. The iPhone 18 Pro Max in particular, already tipped to carry the biggest battery Apple has ever shipped, is exactly the kind of high demand, memory hungry model that feels a squeeze first.
It also gives Apple another reason to let prices drift upward. When supply is tight and demand is not, the textbook answer is to charge more, and Apple has already raised prices across most of the lineup while pointedly leaving the iPhone alone. September is where that changes.
Apple Is Not Sitting Still
None of this is Apple waiting around to get squeezed. The company is testing Chinese memory, lobbying Washington to keep those suppliers usable, and leaning on its scale to lock in whatever capacity it can. Being the largest memory buyer on the planet still counts for something when everyone is short.
But leverage is not the same as supply. A fourth supplier does not conjure chips that do not exist, and no amount of lobbying builds a fab overnight. If Kuo is right, the iPhone 18 could be the rare Apple launch where the limiting factor is not how many people want one, but how many Apple can actually make.
The iPhone 18 and 18 Pro are expected in September, sharing a stage with Apple’s first foldable iPhone. Whether there are enough to go round is suddenly a live question.
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