The memory market isExplain the "larger ramifications".
Elpida lacks the production capacity of Samsung and their QA has not been the best in the past few years.
1 Samsung
2 Hynix
3 Elipda
4 Micron
Elipda was charging about $0.70/gb when it went BK due to excessive debt. Micron charges about $1.20/gb and it uses equity finance. It was thus able to buy Elipda in BK for $2.5B and outbid Hynix and others.
This will make the combined Microm/Elipda be #2 in the market with about 70-80% the manufacturing capacity of Samsung.
Elipda makes memory for iPad 3 and Micron makes memory particularly newer DDR4 later this year suitable for BOTH portable AND server applications. That's Apple's sweet spot.
So it is not surprising they will contract for as much as they can buy. However Apple is supply challenged on memory generally (hence crippled-minimalist hardware) and still Needs Samsung and Hynix as well for the ramp into China.
This is not a one or the other thing, so buy Samsung and Hynix stock on weakness.
Rocketman