Apple's upcoming price hikes are good for the company not so good for consumers

Apple is throwing in the towel. Price increases on its popular devices are coming due to the massive — and ongoing — global shortage of memory and storage chips. Tim Cook , outgoing Apple CEO, told The Wall Street Journal in an interview: "We're doing our best to mitigate the huge increases that are being passed to us, and we've been trying to shield our customers from the increases, but the situation has become unsustainable." Cook did not talk about which products would be impacted, nor did he reveal anything about the magnitude of the price hikes or timing. The next iPhone Pro model could go up by $270, according to estimates from research firm TechInsights, which was cited in the WSJ report. The Journal said that iPhone price increases probably won't come until the fall launch event, but speculated that prices on Macs and iPads could happen sooner ( some models got price increases already ). Analyst notes from Evercore ISI and Bank of America estimated those iPhone price increases would be more modest, closer to $100. Memory and storage prices have been on the rise for a while, with Apple really feeling the pinch in the past couple of quarters. During the company's most recent earnings call in April, Cook said he expected "significantly higher memory costs" in the June quarter. …