Comment by aurareturn
19 hours ago
So with compute stagnating and memory constrained, my money is on vendors taking this as an opportunity to gradually shift away from a yearly release cadence and slow down to a biennial cycle that alternates between budget and flagship launches every other year.
My bet is that vendors will simply discontinue their low margin phones, which are usually the budget phones.
For example, Apple might make fewer iPhone 18 and let it sell out frequently. They’ll use their RAM supplies mostly for the Pro phones.
I don’t think Apple will stop releasing new iPhone Pros every year. The business is too big.
> For example, Apple might make fewer iPhone 18 and let it sell out frequently. They’ll use their RAM supplies mostly for the Pro phones.
Apple has a second option that may not be open to most other vendors - as they've just demonstrated with the MacBook Neo, they could cut the RAM in half on the budget models. One good cycle of optimising the hell out of their (almost entirely native) software stack, and iOS would once again sing on a 4GB SKU.
I doubt they'd consider that because it's a downgrade. If things get truly desperate, then maybe.
The Neo is a downgrade versus the current MacBook Air too. Which is ok since it is also dramatically cheaper.
I don't necessarily expect them to cut memory on the existing models, but I could well see a 4GB iPhone e/mini showing up to shore up the bottom of the lineup, as the pro models get price increases.
The iPhone 18 is already being downgraded: https://www.macrumors.com/2026/04/22/leaker-apple-downgrade-...
I mean, that's the correct short-term read, but if LLMs in hyperscalers remain commercially viable to the point of tying up memory for several years, and if that necessitates an expansion of memory fabrication to satiate unmet demand, and if that demand ends up getting hoovered up by AI companies again due to their unmet or delayed demand from technological adoption, then Apple et al may not have much of a choice but to adopt such a profound strategy change.
There's a lot of 'ifs' there to be sure, but they'd be fools not to at least discuss the possibility internally and understand their options.