Apple lobbies US to source iPhone RAM from China's CXMT

Apple is actively lobbying the White House for permission to buy memory chips from Chinese manufacturer CXMT, aiming to secure its supply chain against a severe global DRAM shortage. The tech giant faces a massive financial hurdle as iPhone manufacturing costs have surged 38 percent, driven by memory prices that have increased nearly seven-fold since the start of 2025. Major suppliers Samsung, Micron, and SK Hynix have reportedly sold out their entire DRAM production capacity through 2027, forcing Apple to look for alternative sources to keep its production lines running.

The US government has placed restrictions on CXMT, and federal officials worry that Apple's proprietary chip-packaging methods might violate technology transfer limits, even though competitors like HP and Acer already use off-the-shelf CXMT memory. To ease these national security concerns, Apple proposes using the Chinese memory exclusively for devices manufactured and sold within China. Because China accounts for roughly 20 percent of Apple's global hardware sales, this arrangement would free up its supply of non-restricted memory from other vendors to serve the rest of the world.

The supply crunch directly threatens Apple's high-performance roadmap, including its planned M7 Ultra Mac Studio AI clusters, which require a massive 1.5TB of RAM. While Apple has already tested CXMT chips in MacBooks and iPhones, CXMT itself is booked through 2026 and will not double its capacity until 2028. Meanwhile, SK Hynix does not expect its new DRAM facilities to be operational until 2029. This prolonged bottleneck is already driving up consumer costs. Apple is expected to raise prices on iPhone 17 models as early as this week, with further price hikes and supply constraints predicted for the upcoming iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone Ultra next month.