is not a "shortage" of memory causing price spike (does not help ofc) but it seems all the "major players" are more or less matching price and speed and voltage almost to the dollar..I call this back seat deal making.
they can ramp production up 10million fold, but, like everything else, if they do not control end user pricing, it means nothing.
Just goes to show how wickedly profitable they are, must be all them super easy to break very expensive smartphones and price gouging on the memory that likely is only costing them 1/1000 of what they put on the market for.
Mind you, price-fixing HAS happened in the past, but in general, yeah, the margins on this stuff is typically razor-ass thin.
They made enough profit at the old level of pricing, and at this point, they know full well that they would benefit from feeding more chips into the market. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if we don't see one of the big mobile GPU players eyeing the PC market right now, given how strained supply is there.
Price fixing is the normal state of affairs. Back before the first convictions on memory price fixing, all the financial press was whining about "unending price wars" and actual competition. When they eventually stopped it was obvious that the fix was finally in.
A more cynical reader might assume that the regulatory interest was punishment for committing competition and that an easy analysis of [at least US] prices show collusion in at least half the available prices. Sometimes regulators try to fight this, not sure about the times when the memory industry was caught colluding.
The beer comment above is likely tragically on the money. Ambev (they own the Budweiser corp) brews nearly all beer sold in the US (and a ton of it worldwide) with the exceptions of [possibly, I think it was a regulatory deal], a rump Miller operation (that Ambev wasn't allowed to buy), Yuengling, Heineken, and the various microbrews (many of them by volume owned by Ambev). Note that (at least in the US), regulators are going to make sure that alcohol prices remain relatively high, and will tax any cheap alcohol up to snuff. It is a monopolist's paradise (especially when you can dictate to retailers what they have to do to be allowed to sell bud light and the rest of the Ambev line, and the retailers are often even more controlled by politically entrenched distributors). Their only real competition is hard liquor (which is typically brutally taxed. Ambev can simply up their prices and pocket the tax difference).
2-3Beelion? Go away , that doesn't even get you a seat (at the table) 27Bln or $40bln lay year. Of course this could be a penance investment for being released from jail. they could buy out AMD before breakfast and come back for Nvidia for lunch.
Or all the manufacturers have the same bottom for pricing to keep making money? You're going to need a bit more evidence that the prices you find on the internet to point to price collusion.
In fairness, it isn't like memory manufacturers HAVEN'T been caught price-fixing before. But with the current demand, I don't think it takes a lot of effort to keep prices high.
If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it is another price-fixing. New densities make memory much cheaper to produce, not suddenly more expensive than 5 years ago.
Can somebody point to a short source summarizing the manufacturing differences between memory and logic? Does not modern DRAM contain some logic on it anyway?
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boozed - Thursday, March 1, 2018 - link
Hah, a giant MondrianDragonstongue - Thursday, March 1, 2018 - link
is not a "shortage" of memory causing price spike (does not help ofc) but it seems all the "major players" are more or less matching price and speed and voltage almost to the dollar..I call this back seat deal making.they can ramp production up 10million fold, but, like everything else, if they do not control end user pricing, it means nothing.
Just goes to show how wickedly profitable they are, must be all them super easy to break very expensive smartphones and price gouging on the memory that likely is only costing them 1/1000 of what they put on the market for.
Adramtech - Friday, March 2, 2018 - link
Dragonstounge, really are you serious? 1/1000, after a $2-3B startup cost?boozed - Friday, March 2, 2018 - link
Sure!After all, a single bottle of beer only costs cents to make. Never mind all of the machinery required to make it. That's all free... right?
mukiex - Monday, March 5, 2018 - link
Mind you, price-fixing HAS happened in the past, but in general, yeah, the margins on this stuff is typically razor-ass thin.They made enough profit at the old level of pricing, and at this point, they know full well that they would benefit from feeding more chips into the market. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if we don't see one of the big mobile GPU players eyeing the PC market right now, given how strained supply is there.
wumpus - Sunday, March 11, 2018 - link
Price fixing is the normal state of affairs. Back before the first convictions on memory price fixing, all the financial press was whining about "unending price wars" and actual competition. When they eventually stopped it was obvious that the fix was finally in.A more cynical reader might assume that the regulatory interest was punishment for committing competition and that an easy analysis of [at least US] prices show collusion in at least half the available prices. Sometimes regulators try to fight this, not sure about the times when the memory industry was caught colluding.
The beer comment above is likely tragically on the money. Ambev (they own the Budweiser corp) brews nearly all beer sold in the US (and a ton of it worldwide) with the exceptions of [possibly, I think it was a regulatory deal], a rump Miller operation (that Ambev wasn't allowed to buy), Yuengling, Heineken, and the various microbrews (many of them by volume owned by Ambev). Note that (at least in the US), regulators are going to make sure that alcohol prices remain relatively high, and will tax any cheap alcohol up to snuff. It is a monopolist's paradise (especially when you can dictate to retailers what they have to do to be allowed to sell bud light and the rest of the Ambev line, and the retailers are often even more controlled by politically entrenched distributors). Their only real competition is hard liquor (which is typically brutally taxed. Ambev can simply up their prices and pocket the tax difference).
dromoxen - Friday, March 9, 2018 - link
2-3Beelion? Go away , that doesn't even get you a seat (at the table) 27Bln or $40bln lay year. Of course this could be a penance investment for being released from jail. they could buy out AMD before breakfast and come back for Nvidia for lunch.rpg1966 - Friday, March 2, 2018 - link
Lol, we got ourselves a real live analyst here!jordanclock - Friday, March 2, 2018 - link
Or all the manufacturers have the same bottom for pricing to keep making money? You're going to need a bit more evidence that the prices you find on the internet to point to price collusion.Lord of the Bored - Saturday, March 3, 2018 - link
In fairness, it isn't like memory manufacturers HAVEN'T been caught price-fixing before. But with the current demand, I don't think it takes a lot of effort to keep prices high.peevee - Tuesday, March 6, 2018 - link
If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it is another price-fixing.New densities make memory much cheaper to produce, not suddenly more expensive than 5 years ago.
Diji1 - Monday, March 5, 2018 - link
As any police investigator will tell you, the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior.The past behavior has been memory manufacturers conducting price fixing by their own admission.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DRAM_price_fixing
III-V - Wednesday, March 7, 2018 - link
The current cause of the high pricing is greater-than-expected demand. Hence the subject of this article.Please take your conspiracy nonsense and shove it up your ass.
StrangerGuy - Friday, March 2, 2018 - link
The way I see it, Samsung is hedging their bets against upcoming (probably massive) increases in China's in-house memory production.peevee - Tuesday, March 6, 2018 - link
Can somebody point to a short source summarizing the manufacturing differences between memory and logic? Does not modern DRAM contain some logic on it anyway?