Mordechai Beizer on RAMageddon has turned existential for smaller tech - 'I’m not convinced that this tremendous rush to build out data centers will end well. Nothing like pouring money into assets that depreciate rapidly combined with business models that all feature hockey-stick growth in revenues. Meanwhile, lots of collateral damage as too much money chases resources with long scale-up times. There’s no market discipline on this build out when capital is so easily raised for the “next big thing”.'
on RAMageddon has turned existential for smaller tech - 'It’s gonna hurt smaller devices, and consumers. Badly. Ouch.'
on RAMageddon has turned existential for smaller tech - 'Gregg, I think Horace laid down a strong argument for Apple to not do that, but to dig deep to establish other suppliers. Do you know of a similar list of US flash memory manufacturers? I’d submit that’s the more critical resource for Apple, since so much of Apple’s chips have integrated memory these days, but ‘persistent storage’ is still a commodity that Apple has to buy on the market.'
on Premarket: Apple was green, turned red - 'At the Open the Nasdaq dropped as much as ~$459 (~1.8%), while AAPL is printing gains of about $3.xx.'
on Premarket: Apple was red, turned green - 'The DJIA closed above 52,000 for the first time on Tuesday. The index is now up 8.85% year-to-date and 18.65% over the past year. Apple ended Tuesday trading up $7.62 or 2.70% at $289.36. The current all-time high for the shares of $317.40 was set on June 8th. Apple is now up 6.44% year-to-date and 41.03% over the past year.'
on Apple's contempt in Epic case goes to the Supreme Court - 'Agree. The judge set herself up to be the regulator of one vendor’s digital marketplace fees. But that is not the role of judges, IMO. It’s a huge slippery slope. As we transact digitally more and more, digital marketplace fees grow larger everyday.'
on Horace Dediu expects iPhone prices to go up $100 - 'Just some rough calculations here. These numbers are predicated on Apple selling around 250 million iPhones, 25 million Macs and 60 million iPads for the year. If Apple increases iPhone prices by $100 and still sells around 250 million iPhones, that is an increase in revenue for the year of $25 billion. If Apple increases the Mac price by an average of $200 and sells 25 million Macs, that is an increase in revenue for the year of $5 billion. If Apple increases iPad prices by an average of $150 and sells 60 million iPads, that is an increase in revenue for the year of $9 billion. All told, the rough calculation shows an increase in revenue of close to 40 billion dollars for the year, or about a 10% increase in revenues for the year. All this is assuming that the price increases don’t affect/delay/cancel some sales in the next year. It will be interesting to how the price increases actually affect revenues and margins/profitability.'
on Horace Dediu expects iPhone prices to go up $100 - 'And here’s the intellectual property, experience, and real world fabrication hurdles one must conquer in preset to make wafers, implement and build designs, create the memory layers, stack and interconnect, then package, test and certify every single part before it’s ready to be sold and shipped. Oh, and you need the people who know how to do this. That talent (and English language skills are not going to come without great costs. It’s a daunting task for a tech company with a huge bag of money but NO experience or personnel familiar with building, the managing and operating a fab, let alone the test/certification and then logistics of it all. Certainly, any or all of that could be bought (maybe Apple should have bought Kioxia or SK Hynix when they had the chance, much like saying Apple should have bought TSMC and made them a wholly owned subsidiary, right?) Probably wouldn’t pass anti-trust nor multinational approvals. “how is current LPDDR5X memory fabricated, and what processes are used?” Current LPDDR5X memory is fabricated using advanced 12 nm to 14 nm class process nodes. Manufacturers utilize EUV (Extreme Ultraviolet) lithography and complex multi-patterning techniques combined with HKMG (High-K Metal Gate) to shrink transistor sizes and reduce current leakage. Key Fabrication Processes & Technologies HKMG (High-K Metal Gate): Replaces traditional materials with those possessing a higher dielectric constant. This improves capacitance and significantly restricts current leakage, yielding the low power-draw characteristics necessary for LPDDR5X. Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) Lithography: Foundries like Samsung use EUV to etch microscopic circuit pathways cleanly. Alternatively, manufacturers like Micron use deep ultraviolet (DUV) multi-patterning techniques to achieve equivalent sizes without EUV. Advanced Packaging Techniques: To fit into space-constrained mobile devices, manufacturers employ back-lapping to thin down dies and use multi-die packaging to layer DRAM structures (such as 4-stack or 6-stack configurations) while keeping overall package heights below 0.65 mm. Manufacturing Flow Wafer Fabrication: Hundreds of LPDDR5X chips are built onto a 300 mm silicon wafer through repeating sequences of photolithography, etching, and deposition. Back-end Assembly (Die Stacking): Wafers are ground down (back-lapping) to strict thinness requirements. Individual dies are then stacked, wire-bonded or connected via TSVs (Through-Silicon Vias), and packaged using epoxy molding. Quality & Functional Testing: Every single cell on the memory module goes through billions of rigorous tests for voltage, temperature tolerances, and speed (reaching up to 10.7 Gbps) before shipping.” Two of the source articles: https://www.micron.com/about/blog/memory/dram/inside-1a-the-worlds-most-advanced-dram-process-technology wccftech com/sk-hynix-lpddr5x-ram-uses-news-process-to-increase-performance-lower-power-consumption/ And these were the simplified versions, another prompt I used gave the highly technical and materials information on how modern memory is fabricated and why specific processes are used. All built on decades of evolution and innovations.'
on Horace Dediu expects iPhone prices to go up $100 - 'Maybe what they could do – after all this shakes out – is set up a different form of agreement with, say, TSMC that is closer to a partnership. They have purchased much of the equipment in the past but that doesn’t seem to be having much positive effect currently. Maybe a larger investment in the Apple/TSMC Computer Chip Company? Apple design TSMC tech and SHARED profits. Up and running almost immediately (relatively speaking)'
on Apple's contempt in Epic case goes to the Supreme Court - 'This ought to be an interesting ruling. Epic wants a forever free lunch and ride the coattails of Apple for free. Courts don’t set prices as that’s up to the free marketplace. Apple should prevail because a Federal District Court Judge doesn’t have the authority to tell any private company how much to charge for their products or services then issue a contempt order because the court didn’t like the pricing structure Apple created. The contempt order from the Oakland judge will be vacated as Apple has a business right to engage in commerce with the marketplace being the final arbiter as to what is a fair fee by choosing to pay it or go elsewhere. Apple didn’t ignore the Judge’s ruling on its face as they reduced their fee while maintaining the right to charge a sum commensurate with the benefit of reaching all of Apple’s Billion+ consumers regardless of how the outside payment was collected for using Apple’s iOS platform. Apple reduced their fee. Just not by enough to appease the Federal District Court Judge. That’s not the basis for a contempt order IMO. Otherwise every credit card company could be taken to court by the FTC for charging an amount of interest that the regulatory body claims is usury. Then request that Master, Visa, or American Express be held in contempt when their % rates weren’t lowered enough. At least in that situation there is a regulatory agency/body bringing an action on behalf of consumers. Here it’s a private corporation (Epic) demanding that either they (Epic) get to establish how much Apple can charge (NOTHING), then request the court to hold them in contempt for violating the spirit and letter of her court order. Way too much unchecked power for a court who are only empowered to make legal rulings on a case. Not dictate pricing. This isn’t a price gouging case. It’s a classic “Free lunch” case.'
on Horace Dediu expects iPhone prices to go up $100 - 'It is true that AOC did not mention Apple by name, but it would be very difficult indeed, to try to make the argument that she would not include Apple in the list of companies that should be broken up. I agree that Fox added the word ‘Apple’ in order to get clicks, a practice that many reporters use (see the New York Times, Washington Post, etc.) to get our attention (and clicks). It is the price Apple pays for being the leader. Sadly, it is a practice that is not going to go away anytime soon.'
on Horace Dediu expects iPhone prices to go up $100 - 'I don’t want to dismiss impact of rising costs on the consumer, but for a iPhone purchaser who holds onto their next phone for say 3 years, that’s what, a dime a day? I’ve already spent over a hundred extra dollar on gas over the last two months. Everything is just more expensive now. Eating out…? Yikes!'
on Horace Dediu expects iPhone prices to go up $100 - '@Joseph I don’t want to rule out greed, but I think it has more to do with the nature of the memory business. Demand can fluctuate rapidly but you don’t just open a new FAB like opening a Costco Warehouse. It takes a huge investment and lots of skilled people and time to build a FAB. The memory makers have been burned in the past by responding to demand that vanished by the time supply increased. This whole mix of AI and CAPEX and RAM pricing is awesomely crazy. You have billionaire Bond-villains investing insane amounts of money because they hope to produce software that will let them run companies with almost no workers. These investments are sucking up enough RAM to distort prices that upend all sorts of other businesses and yet the AI companies (like Anthropic) are losing vast amounts of money on small revenues. Has anyone else interacted with the Customer Service chatbots yet? I find them very annoying. It’s like someone reading back entries in a FAQ page. No real understanding. Worse, they add lots of filler to waste your time (Oh, yes, I understand how that can be frustrating…). It’s a lie because the AI doesn’t understand or feel anything.'
on Premarket: Apple was red, turned green - 'A good day for Apple investors. That paint dried pretty fast today! Also, pretty high volume, over 60 M trades. And once again Max Pain is under water….'
on Horace Dediu expects iPhone prices to go up $100 - 'Tim Cook/Apple increasing prices now gives potential buyers time to get used to that. Should help avoid surprises when a customer walks into a store during the busy Christmas season.'
