Enough of this. It is time to activate the Chinese. Seriously let ASML sell to CXMT etc.
Except, that won’t help. By the time a new fab is up and running, we will probably have a massive surplus.
You assume demand for AI stays flat.
Apple boss Tim Cook says prices to rise due to memory chip costs
81–90 of 178 posts
Re: Apple boss Tim Cook says prices to rise due to memory chip costs
#82Props to them for making it this far into the crisis without raising prices. It had even led to some anomalies where Apple machines were a better price than similar Windows machines.
Their products were so overpriced to begin with they had plenty of buffer to swallow supply price hikes like this for some time.
Re: Apple boss Tim Cook says prices to rise due to memory chip costs
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd expect the iPhone price hikes to be less even in absolute $ than with the cheap phones. iPhones already had relatively large margins (as a %) for the newly increased costs to partially eat into.
Why would you expect Apple to give up their margin? The DRAM price hikes affect every smartphone vendor, even Samsung through opportunity cost. That means the competition will also need to hike their prices. And the competition has lower margin, so they have less choice here.
> Why would you expect Apple to give up their margin?
Price go up, demand go down: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply_and_demand#/media/File:...
(The iPhone is only a premium brand, not a Veblen good).
Re: Apple boss Tim Cook says prices to rise due to memory chip costs
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Aren’t prices sky rocketing precisely because of excess demand? Not exactly. The RAM crisis was sparked by OpenAI contracting with multiple vendors to take vast quantities of raw, unfinished wafers off the market. Wafers which OpenAI had no use for -- they just wanted to starve competitors. This is different from an "AI is so popular that manufacturers can't keep up with demand" story. OpenAI and Anthropic are the…
I think you are splitting hairs. Both arguments boil down to 'AI companies are taking all the chips'. It doesnt really matter why, the result and reasons are the same.
Sorry, that was a tangent unrelated to the original point. Seeing people chalk this situation up to “high demand” when anticompetitive sabotage was the cause just makes my eye twitch.
Re: Apple boss Tim Cook says prices to rise due to memory chip costs
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
You underestimate how poorly optimized Android (both the OS and ecosystem) is.
Why does it need to be Android? Make a phone that will send text messages and run a web browser and all the people who just need a phone will buy it to save $200. Also, when software is poorly optimized that implies it is possible to optimize it.
> Why does it need to be Android? Make a phone that will send text messages and run a web browser
I think we're quite a ways past the point where most people would be satisfied with phones that only do voice, text, and web browsing. People have become quite accustomed to phones that can run arbitrary applications and games. There's quite a sizable population for whom phones are their only computing device.
Re: Apple boss Tim Cook says prices to rise due to memory chip costs
#86Tbf, this current era of capitalism really is a lot where absolutely no one wants to enter the market and take advantage of a clear overpricing of memory for consumers but simply wants to charge the same amount as everyone else. So much for "efficient markets."
This is Capitalism working exactly as intended - resources (RAM) are allocated to those which can use them most productively (AI data-centers) And the AI data-centers are using the RAM so productively, that they are willing to buy them at any price whatsoever.
No, this is not Capitalism working as intended, because there is an entity, the US government, whose purpose is to sabotage those who are willing to increase production to satisfy the extra demand and decrease the prices.
So the market is not free at all, the lack of competition is maintained by force.
Already for many years, the prices of various products like smartphones, SSDs and memory modules have been kept artificially high by the anticompetitive measures called "US sanctions".
Re: Apple boss Tim Cook says prices to rise due to memory chip costs
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why does it need to be Android? Make a phone that will send text messages and run a web browser and all the people who just need a phone will buy it to save $200. Also, when software is poorly optimized that implies it is possible to optimize it.
> Why does it need to be Android? Make a phone that will send text messages and run a web browser I think we're quite a ways past the point where most people would be satisfied with phones that only do voice, text, and web browsing. People have become quite accustomed to phones that can run arbitrary applications and games. There's quite a sizable population for whom phones are their only computing device.
There is nothing stopping it from running arbitrary applications, those applications just wouldn't be Android apps. Which is just as well because 99% of Android apps are just a bloated skin over a web page anyway.
I can't actually think of the last time that I wanted to (rather than was forced to) use a non-messaging non-browser app on my phone.
Re: Apple boss Tim Cook says prices to rise due to memory chip costs
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd expect the iPhone price hikes to be less even in absolute $ than with the cheap phones. iPhones already had relatively large margins (as a %) for the newly increased costs to partially eat into.
Why would you expect Apple to give up their margin? The DRAM price hikes affect every smartphone vendor, even Samsung through opportunity cost. That means the competition will also need to hike their prices. And the competition has lower margin, so they have less choice here.
There's a limit to what even a wealthy customer can stomach. They need to consider what costs them more, Apple eating $50-$100 of the cost, or people holding on to an iPhone one year longer than usual.
These announcements have another effect of boosting sales now. Summer is usually a sales slump so selling more now is probably good for Apple.
Re: Apple boss Tim Cook says prices to rise due to memory chip costs
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or they'll start making cheap phones with <=2GB of RAM again and people will have to write software that uses memory efficiently (the horror).
You underestimate how poorly optimized Android (both the OS and ecosystem) is.
But haven't you heard, software is solved?
"Make this OS and ecosystem more efficient. Make no mistakes."
Re: Apple boss Tim Cook says prices to rise due to memory chip costs
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
You underestimate how poorly optimized Android (both the OS and ecosystem) is.
Why does it need to be Android? Make a phone that will send text messages and run a web browser and all the people who just need a phone will buy it to save $200. Also, when software is poorly optimized that implies it is possible to optimize it.
For a start, most of the world does not use text messages. They use WhatsApp. (Apart from a few countries where WeChat, Telegram or Line are more popular.) As far as I know the US is the only country that still uses SMS/RCS.