The half-year recap, built from what reporters actually measured: memory costs climbed, Apple's own list prices followed, and almost nothing in the coverage we read moved the other direction. No day counts, no self-tracked prices, just what got reported.
Revised September 28, 2026: findings now come from the published sources cited at the end, not from tests or price logs the Editorial Staff never kept.
The fiscal midpoint of 2026 has arrived. The Editorial Staff, unwilling to leave a half-year unreconciled even briefly, has closed the books. What follows is a reconciliation of what analysts and reporters with real access to the actual numbers found in the first half of 2026, sorted into what rose, what fell, and what declined to participate. We compile this because we compile everything. It is easier than being asked why we didn't.
Method, briefly: every reading below is attributed to the outlet that reported it — IDC, Tom's Hardware, PBS NewsHour, 9to5Mac, AppleInsider — not verified against a baseline of our own. Where a source gives a percentage, we report the percentage. The deal cards elsewhere on this site carry the current Amazon price; this ledger tracks direction.
Memory itself. IDC frames 2026 as a reallocation problem, not a production collapse: manufacturing capacity that used to go into a phone's memory module or a laptop's SSD is instead going into high-bandwidth memory for AI data centers. IDC put 2026 DRAM and NAND supply growth at roughly 16 to 17% year over year — below the pace the industry has historically needed to keep consumer prices flat. Tom's Hardware reported that AI-driven demand kept DRAM and NAND prices climbing through the third quarter, even as ordinary consumer affordability limits began slowing the pace of further increases.
PC and phone pricing, by forecast. IDC modeled two scenarios for 2026: a moderate case with roughly 4.9% unit contraction and average-selling-price increases in the 4-6% range, and a pessimistic case near 8.9% contraction with 6-8% price increases. Smartphones fared somewhat better in the moderate case — around 2.9% contraction, 3-5% price increases — worse in the pessimistic one. Budget-focused phones face disproportionate pressure, per IDC, since memory represents a larger share of a mid-range device's build cost than a flagship's.
Apple's own list prices. On June 25, according to PBS NewsHour, Apple raised prices across its Mac and iPad lineups, attributing the change directly to the memory shortage. Apple's written statement, quoted by PBS: "We have now reached a point where we need to begin raising prices on a number of products, including today's increases for iPad and Mac." That's the clearest single data point of the half — a named company, on the record, doing the thing every forecast above predicted somebody would eventually do.
Nothing, as far as the reporting we read this half goes. Not one outlet, across memory chips, PCs, phones, or Apple's own catalog, described a broad price decline in the first half of 2026. If something out there genuinely got cheaper, the story didn't reach us, and we can only reconcile what got covered. This section is short every half. This half, it's empty. We keep the header anyway, for the halves when it isn't.
iPhone, Apple Watch, AirPods, AirTag. According to 9to5Mac and AppleInsider, the AirTag on AppleInsider's list alone, these were left untouched in Apple's June round even as Mac and iPad prices rose — spanning, per 9to5Mac's count, seven iPhone models, three Apple Watch lines, and four AirPods models. AppleInsider's reporting points to a plausible reason for the split: iPhones get refreshed every fall regardless, so raising prices on a soon-to-be-superseded lineup made less sense than waiting for the normal cycle, while Macs and iPads stay in service longer and were more logical candidates for an interim increase.
Four lines. Three point up, one points at "no change yet," and none of them point down. That is, per everything we've read this half, an unusual half.
Prime Day arrives in mid-July and, per the same memory-shortage logic above, may be the first real test of whether discounting still happens inside a rising-cost environment. We'll read that coverage too, the way we read this half's. The ledger reopens July 1. The ledger does not observe holidays, and neither, it increasingly appears, does the reporting we rely on.
— The BuyGetRewards Editorial Staff
Four lines on this ledger, and every last one of you is astonished!! Memory costs rose because data centers are buying the wafers you wanted for your laptop -- pl-pl-plainly, when two buyers want the same finite resource, the price does not stay where it was. Apple raised Mac and iPad prices and said so, in writing, in its own words, which is more candor than this industry usually bothers with. iPhone, Watch, AirPods, and AirTag sat still, for the unglamorous reason that Apple would rather raise a price once, on schedule in the fall, than twice?!
Not one outlet in this ledger reported a price falling. None!!! [keyboard mash] [garbled transmission], if you are still waiting for prices to drift back down to where they sat in January, you are waiting on a law of physics that was never enacted.
A LAW OF PHYSICS THAT WAS NEVER ENACTED. AND YET. Prime Day arrives shortly. It is, per everyone I've read, the first real test of whether discounting still happens inside a rising market. Irr3futably, don't expect it to look like January again.
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