Most likely Apple has been spending whatever they can to get in front of the memory market.

They definitely are, judging by their price increases.

Even so, DDR5 is so high-demand that it's likely that Apple can't outbid customers like Nvidia or OpenAI when they drive the margins they do.

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detourdog a day ago | parent [-]

No but they can pay for new manufacturing to be built. 2-3 lead time should be enough to bankroll the effort. Apple has to much money too sit around hoping that memory situation resolves itself. They were caught flat footed by the RAM market.

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Danox a day ago | parent | next [-]

In-house the market has changed, the conditions have changed, the price has changed the only way around this problem is to design and engineer around it in-house. The design and engineering capability isn’t the problem, money isn’t the problem. It’s whether or not the new CEO/Apple have the will to do what’s necessary. That’s pretty much the bottom line… they have done it before (Intel/Qualcomm), and they now have to do it again.

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bigyabai a day ago | parent [-]

In-house, Apple has no fab. They have labs, but manufacturing memory would make them critically reliant on an expensive fab partner, probably driving them back to be an Intel customer again.

Design, engineering capability and money are all a problem here, and the onus falls on you to prove otherwise.

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detourdog 16 hours ago | parent [-]

I think they just have to fund a facility specifically to meet their RAM needs. It will take time but it's only a production issue.

	▲	bigyabai 9 hours ago \| parent [-]
		From who? SK hynix, Samsung and Micron are all eager to squeeze Apple for the market price of DDR5. They won't build extra fab capacity for them because Nvidia, AMD and OpenAI will outbid them for future capacity. Products like HBM are overbooked right now too, which means that building an extra DDR5 facility might just end up feeding the enterprise HBM market. And CXMT has refused Apple's business entirely: https://appleinsider.com/articles/26/08/06/chinese-ram-suppl...

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kingleopold a day ago | parent | prev [-]

they didnt realy caught flat, they knew their yoy growth rates and demands. NO AI company had that future demand so certain for all hardware they have. they could easily lock years of ram supply for next years extra demand, becausw they already have cash too, but instead they went after few % margin there or whatever. they now enjoy it

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detourdog a day ago | parent [-]

Are you suggesting that they knew there would be an extreme increase in RAM prices and did nothing because paying more would help their margin?

	▲	kingleopold a day ago \| parent [-]
		not exactly. I mean they saw increasing ram prices + they knew their demand. They did almost nothing for what months and year or more now? Lack of actions cost us a lot more than apple probably. They are happy to sell at few times more expensive ram, but here I'm thinking they could have great edge, they wasted it with all cash in hand.