Apple reportedly tests Chinese memory chips for future iPhones and MacBooks

Apple is said to be testing memory chips from ChangXin Memory Technologies, or CXMT, China’s biggest DRAM maker, for future iPhones and MacBooks. If it moves forward, that would mark a real change from Apple’s usual dependence on Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron.

People familiar with the matter say Apple is evaluating CXMT’s DRAM at a moment when the memory market is getting tighter. Apple has good reason to want another qualified supplier: less exposure if one vendor slips, and a stronger hand on both price and volume for a core component used across its products.

That pressure comes from the wider memory squeeze. Strong data-center demand for high-bandwidth memory is tightening supply and lifting prices for conventional memory along with it, so testing CXMT gives Apple a fallback if its current suppliers keep prioritizing more lucrative product lines or if pricing gets worse.

If you follow Apple’s hardware supply chain, this is one to watch. Politics could still put limits on it, though. Any Apple-CXMT arrangement would almost certainly draw US scrutiny, which makes standard off-the-shelf memory far more likely than deeply customized chips.

So don’t expect to see CXMT memory in the next iPhone 18 Pro. That product is already deep in development, CXMT’s production lines are said to be booked for the rest of the year, and its pricing may end up similar to, or even higher than, what Samsung and SK Hynix are charging.

There’s nothing for you to download here yet. Still, after CXMT’s July 2026 IPO and its push into LPDDR6, Apple’s testing looks a lot like a hedge on future supply flexibility.