Apple and memory chips: a flat no, then a quiet maneuver?

An Office Hours question asked by Joseph B., July 31, 2026.

Q: Would Apple buy a memory maker — get into RAM itself?

They said they wouldn’t get into this, and I’m surprised they said it — even if they thought they would, I don’t know why they would insist on it publicly. I think they feel that it’s not within their wheelhouse, as they say. It’s not their core competence. It’s not that they cannot create it. I’m not going to get into the weeds on this, but basically it’s hard. It’s unique. It has different dynamics. It’s impossible unless you have huge scale, and alone, Apple is probably not big enough as a consumer of its own products, so they’d have to sell them. It just doesn’t resonate with them at all.

I thought, maybe six months ago, that as a response to this, they would — despite everybody — buy or build their own. It’s funny: they came out with a flat rejection of that. Now I think they’ll maybe go behind the scenes, encouraging others to do it, possibly through financing, political maneuvering, something with Intel, something to do with all the cronyism that goes on in Washington these days. I don’t know. But they’ll back in, as they say. They’ll maneuver and figure it out.

It would be ironic if Intel becomes a memory company, after having switched to CPUs from memory at its origin. This is where you are if you’re in the semi business: you get whipsawed. It’s such a tough business.

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Editor’s Note: This was one of the questions asked by participants in Asymco’s July 2026 Office Hours live Q&A session, held the day after Apple’s FQ3 2026 earnings and open to Asymco One subscribers.

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