Opinion: Micron's earnings report is win big, but Apple and Microsoft's price increases have shifted the market from "embracing price hikes" to "worrying about disrupted demand."

According to Mars Finance, an explanation is emerging for the market sell-off in AI and storage stocks on June 26th: the real trigger for a sentiment reversal wasn't Micron's poor earnings, but rather the price increases by end-user companies like Apple and Microsoft. Apple reportedly raised prices on several Mac and iPad models on June 25th by approximately 15%-25%, citing soaring prices for DRAM, NAND, and other memory and storage chips due to surging demand from AI data centers. Microsoft also announced a price increase for Xbox starting August 1st, with the 512GB and 1TB models increasing by $100 and $150 respectively, similarly citing soaring storage and memory costs. This view has appeared in discussions among overseas media and some market participants. Business Insider described Apple's price increase as "wiping out the tech stock rally brought about by Micron's earnings," and Futurum CEO Daniel Newman also mentioned that Apple's price increase made the market realize that rising storage prices have shifted from upstream profits to consumer costs. If only Micron's earnings were considered, the market should have been more optimistic. Micron's revenue and profits significantly exceeded expectations, indicating that AI's demand for storage remains strong, and HBM, DRAM, and NAND have not yet entered a demand collapse phase. In other words, Micron's financial report proves that the AI hardware cycle is still ongoing, even hotter than the market expected. However, Apple and Microsoft's price increases have changed market interpretation. In the past, storage price increases were mainly understood as a boon for upstream companies. The fact that Micron, Samsung, and SK Hynix could raise prices indicated supply shortages, continued expansion of AI data centers, and continued profit concentration in the hardware sector. But when terminal giants like Apple and Microsoft also begin to pass on costs to consumers, the market sees not just "upstream profits," but "downstream pressure." The view is that high profits for storage manufacturers are not inherently problematic, but if these profits come from continuously squeezing downstream demand, then application developers, terminal hardware manufacturers, and consumers will ultimately bear the costs. Apple's price increase shows that high storage costs are no longer just a financial issue within the supply chain, but are beginning to permeate product prices. Microsoft's price increase also shows that this pressure is not a problem for a single company, but a problem faced by the entire consumer electronics and AI hardware chain. The market's concern isn't about the price increase itself, but rather the demand disruption it will cause. Will consumers accept more expensive computers, tablets, consoles, and AI services? Can application companies continue to expand despite higher computing costs? Can cloud vendors convert capital expenditures into sufficiently high revenue? Once these questions become reality, the logic for storage stocks will shift from "benefiting from price increases" to "being negatively impacted by price increases."