Apple has quietly increased the prices of external storage products in its retail stores, and the reason ties directly to the growing demand for artificial intelligence infrastructure, which now consumes large amounts of memory and storage across the tech industry.
According to Mark Gurman in Bloomberg’s Power On newsletter, Apple updated prices for several external drives both online and in physical stores, and the changes are steep enough to catch attention.
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“A SanDisk 4-terabyte solid-state external drive that once cost roughly $500 is now $1,200, while a 1-terabyte version has gone from $120 to $360.”
AI demand is driving storage costs higher
The spike in prices connects directly to how companies are building AI systems at scale, where data centers need massive amounts of SSD and memory chips to run models and store data, and this demand has pushed suppliers to prioritize enterprise customers over consumer products.
As a result, vendors are increasing prices, and Apple has limited control since it buys these drives from third-party manufacturers, which means the cost increase flows directly to customers shopping in Apple Stores.
Price is only part of the problem, because availability has also taken a hit, and many external drives are either out of stock or difficult to find, especially online, where listings often show delays or no delivery options at all.
Gurman notes that customers are more likely to find inventory in physical stores, while Apple’s website shows limited availability, which reflects a broader shortage affecting multiple retailers.
It’s not just Apple
This issue goes beyond Apple’s retail business, because similar price hikes and stock shortages are visible across platforms like Amazon and Best Buy, where both SSDs and traditional hard drives have become more expensive and harder to find.
The underlying problem remains the same across the industry, since AI infrastructure continues to consume a large share of global chip production, leaving fewer resources available for consumer storage products.
There is no quick fix here because increasing chip production takes time, and companies are still expanding capacity to meet demand, which means consumers will likely continue to see higher prices and limited availability in the near term.
For now, anyone planning to buy external storage from Apple or other retailers should expect higher costs and fewer options, as AI continues to reshape how storage supply gets allocated across the industry.
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