I wonder if Apple will budge. The margins on their RAM upgrades were so ludicrous before that they're probably still RAM-profitable even without raising their prices, but do they want to give up those fat margins?

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rfmc an hour ago | parent | next [-]

I know contract prices are not set in stone. But if there’s one company that probably has their contract prices set for some time in the future, that company is Apple, so I don’t think they will be giving up their margins anytime soon.

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throw0101d an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> I wonder if Apple will budge.

Perhaps I don't understand something so clarification would be helpful:

I was under the impression that Apple's RAM was on-die, and so baked in during chip manufacturing and not a 'stand alone' SKU that is grafted onto the die. So Apple does not go out to purchase third-party product, but rather self-makes it (via ASML) when the rest of the chip is made (CPU, GPU, I/O controller, etc).

Is this not the case?

	▲	jsheard an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Apple's RAM is on-package, not on-die. The memory is still a separate die which they buy from the same suppliers as everyone else. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/df/Mac_Mini... That whole square is the M1 package, Apple's custom die is under the heatspreader on the left, and the two blocks on the right are LPDDR packages stacked on top of the main package. https://wccftech.com/apple-m2-ultra-soc-delidded-package-siz... Scaled up, the M2 Ultra is the same deal just with two compute dies and 8 separate memory packages.

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Night_Thastus an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

RAM upgrades are such a minor, insignificant part of Apple's income - and play no part in plans for future expansion/stock growth.

They don't care. They'll pass the cost on to the consumers and not give it a second thought.

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diabllicseagull an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I'd like to believe that their pricing for ram upgrades are like that so the base model can hit a low enough of a price. I don't believe they have the same margin for the base model compared to the base model + memory upgrade.

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suprnurd an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I read online that Apple uses three different RAM suppliers supposedly? I wonder if Apple has the ability to just make their own RAM?

	▲	kayson an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Apple doesn't own any foundries, so no. It's not trivial to spin up a DRAM foundry either. I do wonder if we'll see TSMC enter the market though. Maybe under pressure from Apple or nvidia...
	▲	FastFT an hour ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		There are no large scale pure play DRAM fabs that I’m aware of, so Apple is (more or less) buying from the same 3 companies as everyone else.
	▲	umanwizard an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Apple doesn't own semiconductor fabs. They're not capable of making their own RAM.

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dcchambers an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I am fully expecting a 20%+ price bump on new mac hardware next year.

	▲	Eric_WVGG an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Not me. It’s wildly unusual for Apple to raise their prices on basically anything… in fact I'm not sure if its ever happened. * It’s been pointed out by others that price is part of Apple's marketing strategy. You can see that in the trash can Mac Pro, which logically should have gotten cheaper over the ridiculous six years it was on sale with near-unchanged specs. But the marketing message was, "we're selling a $3000 computer." Those fat margins leave them with a nice buffer. Competing products will get more expensive; Apple's will sit still and look even better by comparison. We are fortunate that Apple picked last year to make 16gb the new floor, though! And I don't think we're going to see base SSDs get any more generous for a very, very long time. * okay I do remember that Macbook Airs could be had for $999 for a few years, that disappeared for a while, then came back

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loloquwowndueo an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

It’s 4D chess my dude, they were just training people to accept those super high ram prices. They saw this coming I tell you!