Tim Cook warms up Wall Street for price hikes

Wall Street Journal:“Unfortunately, price increases are unavoidable,” [Apple CEO Tim Cook] said. “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 declined to offer details on the timing or scale of the planned price increases, nor which products would be affected. Apple’s next major product launch is likely to be in September when it releases the iPhone 18 lineup, expected to include a new foldable iPhone.Few points here:Apple has already raised some prices, sort of: It has eliminated some of the lower-spec'd versions of its Macs, nudging buyers to higher margined configurations. A price increase on the iPhone is long overdue, and the 20th anniversary year for the device seems a good opportunity to do that. The last time the iPhone saw a price increase was with 2017's iPhone X — the 10th anniversary model.The WSJ did the math on a $1,299…