Apple Clings to Samsung as RAM Prices Soar

[Ursadorable]

And people thought I was crazy buying 64GB for my gaming pc. It’s overkill they said. It was unnecessary they said.

You know what’s crazy now? The fact I could sell my modules it for 3x the price I paid for them.

Exactly. I bought 64GB Crucial Pro DDR4 kit for CAD$137 two years ago. Today the same pair are now selling for CAD$660.

I'm afraid to see what the Mac Studio M5 Ultra is going to sell for. The current M3 Ultra model is CAD$5500, I'm guessing when it finally comes out, it's going to be at least CAD$6000.

 

[artifex]

The moment AI finds a more efficient way of working -- let's say iterative logic models that require hundreds of times less resources than large language models get to the point where they can largely displace the LLMs -- this whole bubble blows up. So it's not as though someone's going to lightly or casually take on the risk of building huge new fabs.

I expect their response will be great, now we can spin up even more instances, and bigger models, too.

 

[deevey]

It’s crazy but based on what I’ve seen from Apple over the last few years every major component in their products will be manufactured by them.

We’re already seeing this with the C1/C1x and N1 chips.

Apple do not manufacture the components, they design them. They are manufactured by TSMC who also manufacture their M and A series processors.

 

[Sippincider]

Soooo... should I buy that M4 Studio I've been diligently planing with a healthy dose of delayed gratification or risk q2 waiting for the M5?

Similar situation here. Pick up an M4 Studio today and risk getting a flickering display? Or wait, hope the flicker gets fixed, and possibly pay even more for the already expensive BTO upgrades?

I've never been a successful gambler so I'm # either way. 🤣

 

[seek3r]

Unless they shut down and reconfigure the older fab plants that produce auto chips, not much. AI companies aren't interested in older chips or chips based on older processes.

The infotainment systems, however...

Hey, maybe a silver lining will be limiting GM’s ability to build faster infotainment systems and they’ll go back to including carplay

 

[definitive]

if i ran a tech blog, i'd be pumping out doom and gloom articles about electronics price hikes due to ram daily. worked with tariffs, why not this?

 

[grammatica]

This headlines makes it sound like Apple's is trying to develop its own RAM chips and SAMSUNG is saving its ass. I doubt Apple want to get into chip manufacturing. Since the original iPhone, Apple has always used parts from many suppliers to assemble its products.

 

[JosephAW]

So not only is AI making our electricity more expensive but now our electronic devices, what’s next? jobs? Oh wait never mind… 😵 💰

 

[257Loner]

Don’t be surprised if future iPhones have less RAM than today’s models!

 

[drkrleitch]

Eventually a company so vertically integrated like Apple will have to build their own fabs. Real men have fabs, like Jerry Sanders used to say. Their reliance on TSMC and Samsung is economically unsound.

That's a laugh. Samsung is vertically integrated. Apple manufactures nothing, design only.

 

[drkrleitch]

It’s crazy but based on what I’ve seen from Apple over the last few years every major component in their products will be manufactured by them.

We’re already seeing this with the C1/C1x and N1 chips.

That's not how it works. Samsung is vertically integrated, providing chips, displays, and more to Apple. Apple manufactures nothing. Apple is a design-only shop.

 

[Populus]

No company manages supply chain better than Apple.

Well, let’s hope this holds true, because this 2026 I’m buying an M5 Mac mini and I wouldn’t like to pay eye-watering price for the RAM upgrades (I mean, even more)

 

[Jeeve Stubbs]

"Samsung is said to be the only company that can meet Apple's conditions"

That's never a good thing. Monopoly often leads to inflation and/or blackmail.

 

[svish]

Not expecting any price hike for any of the Apple devices in the near future. Base model of all devices should continue to have same price tag. But expecting memory upgrades to be costlier for Macs in the future and maybe even for iPhone 18 series. Maybe $250 for additional 16GB in Macs.

 

[Dr McKay]

Will it do any good? I saw in the news recently that Samsungs memory division refused an order from Samsung mobile division.

 

[jjudson]

Wow, I checked the RAM chips I bought one year ago for Megaputer. Last year it was $98.99 for two G.Skill Flare X5 16GB DDR5-6000 chips. I just checked the price on the same chipset. $379.99!!!

 

[Yr Blues]

F AI

 

[Patchwork]

I don’t think Apple will want to get into the fabrication business as the amount you have to spend is huge. For example TSMC have just started work on their new A14 chip fabrication plant in Taiwan with an expected cost of $48.5bn. They are also spending something like $165bn setting up chip fabrication in the US. This kind of spending only makes sense if you have lots of clients with Nvidia probably being the biggest at the moment due to use of GPUs in AI data centres.

 

[bigglow]

Using Apple's cash war chest they may be better off exchanging USD for RAM chips and sell DDR5 chips to G.Skill, Crucial, etc who pay on letters of credit or other non-cash instruments.

Pre-paid cash up front is always preferred.

 

[ThomasJL]

Tim Crook has raised prices on iPhones far above the rate of inflation, so profit marigins are now so unreasonably big that even with RAM prices soaring, Apple will still make a profit. As for Mac RAM, Apple has always overcharged for it, but it worsened under Crook. Not only has Crook raised RAM prices on Macs, but he did something even worse: literally every Mac now has soldered RAM, which gives users no choice but to pay for Apple's overpriced RAM when they don't even need it just to future proof. In the past, users could just buy the base RAM model, and then upgrade the RAM with much less expensive third-party RAM, which would be even lower in price after a few years when the users needed to upgrade their RAM.

 

[bigglow]

Tim Crook has raised prices on iPhones far above the rate of inflation, so profit marigins are now so unreasonably big that even with RAM prices soaring, Apple will still make a profit. As for Mac RAM, Apple has always overcharged for it, but it worsened under Crook. Not only has Crook raised RAM prices on Macs, but he did something even worse: literally every Mac now has soldered RAM, which gives users no choice but to pay for Apple's overpriced RAM when they don't even need it just to future proof. In the past, users could just buy the base RAM model, and then upgrade the RAM with much less expensive third-party RAM, which would be even lower in price after a few years when the users needed to upgrade their RAM.

I think Tim's solidly behind the worldwide top 20% smartphone market share hence the recently revised starting price of $599.