Apple’s Open Strategy Under the Storage Crisis: Completing Industry Class Liquidation Through Cost Surges

As the global AI computing power race reaches a fever pitch in 2026, Apple Inc.'s upcoming earnings report is more than a financial settlement; it is a strategic manifesto for a "structural clearing" achieved through supply chain hegemony and a monopoly on advanced manufacturing processes. Currently, the market is clouded by negative rumors such as soaring memory chip costs, the scramble for TSMC’s 2nm capacity, and shrinking smartphone margins. However, this collective anxiety based on first-order logic often obscures the second-order truth of the top-level game in capital markets. Goldman Sachs recently raised its FY2026 EPS forecast for Apple to above $7.50 and set a price target of $320. The underlying logic is that Apple is leveraging a technological generation gap and financial depth to conduct a long-premeditated "class liquidation" of the global intelligent hardware market.

1. The "Profit Firewall" of 2nm Advanced Processes: TSMC’s Monopoly and Samsung’s Yield Trap

Widespread market concerns suggest that TSMC's 2nm (N2) quotes of $25,000 to $30,000 per wafer will drag down Apple’s gross margins. However, second-order thinking suggests this is precisely the deepest moat Apple has built against the Qualcomm and MediaTek camps. Apple has already secured over 50% of TSMC’s initial 2nm capacity, meaning that even if the Android camp is willing to pay the steep "entry fee," they face the predicament of having no supply available.

The harsher reality lies in Samsung’s 2nm yield gamble. Although Samsung claims its 2nm GAA process is stabilizing, industry research indicates that reliable yields for mass production are not expected until late 2026. This "yield generation gap" makes Apple the only player globally capable of delivering 2nm AI chips at scale in 2026. When competitors are forced to consider returning to Samsung’s foundry to control costs, they have actually fallen into the "yield trap" set by Apple—either endure high-priced, scarce capacity from TSMC, causing gross margins to drop below the 18% warning line, or bet on Samsung’s yield and face the dual risks of overheating and unstable shipments. In contrast, while the per-chip cost of Apple’s A20 is expected to surge to $280, for the iPhone Pro series with an average selling price (ASP) exceeding $1,200, this represents only a roughly 2% margin fluctuation. This disparity in cost-absorption capacity is essentially a structural margin squeeze Apple exerts on competitors using its capacity monopoly.

2. A Deep Dive into the FY2026 EPS Model: From Hardware Premiums to an AI Traffic Tax

A deep dive into Goldman Sachs' FY2026 $7.50 EPS forecast model for Apple reveals a structural qualitative change in its profit composition. Within the $7.50 forecast, core hardware contributes approximately $4.10, primarily driven by the iPhone 17/18 upgrade cycle stabilizing the ASP at the $1,050 mark.

However, the true growth engine is the marginal contribution from the Apple Intelligence+ subscription model. This zero-marginal-cost cloud AI value-added service is expected to contribute $0.95 to EPS, with profit margins exceeding 75%. As subscriber penetration reaches a 15% tipping point in 2026, it will drive the services business's gross margin past the historic peak of 73%. Combined with $1.25 from regular services like App Store commissions and Apple Music, and a $1.20 capital appreciation effect squeezed out through a roughly $110 billion annual share buyback program, Apple’s net profit for FY2026 is projected to reach $128 billion, a year-over-year increase of approximately 13%-15%.

3. Supply-Side Structural Carnage: Prepayments as a Nuclear Weapon

The reshuffling of the memory supply chain further strengthens Apple's absolute dominance. Samsung and Hynix raising LPDDR memory prices by nearly 100% is an inevitable result of the massive shift of global DRAM capacity toward AI server-specific HBM chips. Amidst this "capacity migration," Apple has utilized its liquidity reserves of over $156 billion to lock in low-priced capacity through massive prepayment agreements.

This "master-servant reversal" in the supply chain forms an ironic closed loop: Samsung is using the cash received from Apple to expand HBM plants, selling the high-priced AI chips produced there to Nvidia and cloud computing giants, while being obligated to prioritize Apple’s smartphone memory supply at agreed low prices. By the end of 2026, when Xiaomi and Huawei find themselves unable to purchase sufficient 16GB chips on the market, Apple will be using this "cost scissors" gap to turn price hikes into a nuclear weapon for clearing out the market.

4. Revaluation: Apple’s "Digital Land Deed" Logic

In summary, by 2026, Apple’s core value will no longer be mere hardware sales, but rather its control over the world’s highest-quality traffic portals through local AI Agents. The high-frequency data exchange processed by local Agents per second is more than 10 times that of a standard app. These extreme hardware requirements will render 8GB memory devices complete "electronic waste" in the AI era.

By mandating a 16GB memory upgrade and monopolizing TSMC’s 2nm capacity, Apple has executed a perfect "digital class segregation." Goldman Sachs' firm bullishness toward $320 stems from Apple's control over the "land deeds" of the digital world for the next decade. In the watershed year of 2026, every supply chain disruption and cost spike will essentially be adding bricks to Apple’s moat. While retail investors panic-sell amidst rumors, top-tier institutions are silently waiting on the eve of the harvest for this long-premeditated class liquidation.