Apple's new foldable iPhone, the Duo, sold out within days of its late-October launch at $1,999 a unit, and the company's new CEO is already fielding uncomfortable questions. John Ternus, who took over from Tim Cook in September, told financial analysts on Monday he was "thrilled" by the early reaction. His new chief operating officer, Sabhi Kahn, was more candid: "At this time, it's really hard to predict when supply and demand will be in balance."

In other words, Apple doesn't know when you'll be able to buy one.

That uncertainty sits alongside a separate problem. A "small number" of Duos have seen their screens crack along the inside fold, according to Apple. The company said last week it would replace affected devices, though executives didn't bring it up during Monday's earnings call. For a product priced at $1,999, the combination of scarcity and cracking screens is not the launch story Apple wanted.

The bigger picture behind the supply crunch

The shortage isn't just about the Duo. Kahn told analysts that Apple is struggling to get enough advanced microprocessors across its entire product lineup. Those chips, mostly made by TSMC in Taiwan, are what make iPhones, Macs, and iPads run as fast as they do. That constraint is expected to continue into next year, with iPads and Macs hit hardest.

Meanwhile, a separate cost crisis is squeezing Apple on another front. Memory storage, the technology that lets your phone hold photos, apps, and messages, runs increasingly through data centres. Those data centres are under enormous pressure from the AI boom: platforms built by companies like OpenAI and Anthropic are consuming vast amounts of storage capacity, pushing prices up for everyone who relies on the same infrastructure, including Apple. Tim Cook earlier this year called the sudden spike in data centre costs a "thousand year flood." His successor is still living with the aftermath.

The result: Apple has raised prices on essentially all of its hardware by around 20%. That's not a tariff surcharge or a one-time adjustment. It's a broad repricing of the Apple product lineup, driven by structural cost increases that show no sign of reversing.

What the numbers say

Despite all of that, Apple's quarterly results were stronger than Wall Street expected. Revenue rose 12% to $114.5 billion in the July-to-September period. iPhone sales specifically climbed 17% to $57 billion, a record, even though the Duo wasn't on sale yet during that window. Mac sales hit $10.7 billion, up 27%. For the full year, Apple's overall revenue rose 15% to $479 billion.

Not everything is growing. iPad and wearables (including Apple Watch and headphones) both fell, by 10% and 7% respectively.

Jacob Bourne, an analyst at Emarketer, noted that Apple's cautious approach to AI spending, leaning on partnerships with companies like Alphabet rather than building massive infrastructure itself, is helping preserve cash flow while rivals like Amazon and Intel face investor skepticism over the returns on their AI bets.

That strategy looks sensible on a spreadsheet. But it also means Apple is navigating a hardware cost crisis partly caused by AI investment without being the one doing the investing.

For ordinary consumers, the math is straightforward. Apple products cost more than they did two years ago, the foldable flagship most people are curious about isn't available, and the company can't say when it will be. The 20% price increase across the lineup reflects real cost pressures, not just margin expansion. But "real cost pressure" doesn't make a $2,000 phone feel like better value when its screen might crack.