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Korean FTC May Investigate Apple/Samsung
freaktheclown writes "Samsung may have sold Apple flash memory chips at below-market prices, possibly violating the country's competition laws. From the article: 'According to a report by Yonhap News, Korean Fair Trade Commission (FTC) Chairman Kang Chul-kyu said that his agency could look into allegations that Samsung sold the memory chips to Apple at below-market rates. Apple reportedly grabbed a significant share of Samsung's flash capacity in order to introduce its new iPod Nano. Analysts also speculate the computer maker got a significant discount from Samsung in order to hit the Nano's $199 and $249 prices.'" Adds a new layer to a previous story, eh?
> Analysts also speculate the computer maker got a significant discount from Samsung in order to hit the Nano's $199 and $249 prices.'"
They can speculate that all they like, but the $199 2GB nano has Toshiba chips, not samsung.
Try again.
have gotten at leas one thing wrong
"Analysts also speculate the computer maker got a significant discount from Samsung in order to hit the Nano's $199 and $249 prices"
the $199 model uses flash chips from toshiba (2* 1gb) whereas the $249 model uses flash from samsung (2* 2gb)
It's Toshiba, not Hitachi.
Apple has never used Hitachi 1.8" drives in iPods. Rio did, in the Karma.
And there were no other drives available because Apple was buying them as fast as they could be made. That's the only reason. The drives were available before the iPod came out (in 2.5 and 5 gig configurations), so anyone could have got them. And anyone perhaps could have gone for an exclusive. But they didn't, Apple did. Toshiba could have made an mp3 player of their before Apple made the iPod (they made one later instead).
You're off your rocker. Even if Apple is the only one who could get these drives, that's not even Apple's fault. Any company would like an exclusive. It's Toshiba's fault for granting them one.
Apple innovated a lot with the iPod. A company that was there before Apple like Creative or Archos could have made a device with the 1.8" drive before the iPod even came out. They didn't. That's the Apple difference.
Anyway, I thought this horse got beat to death when Apple killed Mac clones. Is there really anything left to be said about Apple's willingness to compete as a commodity after that?
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
It's the market economics for you, as simple as that. SJ probably called up Samsung and said, OK folks, I'm ready to buy a shitload of 2GB chips, and I do mean A SHITLOAD (ten million), what's the price you can offer to me so that I don't go to Toshiba. And they made an offer SJ could not refuse.
Now imagine Cowon audio (BTW, what's up with their company name? "Cowon"? Hello?) calls up and says, we're ready to buy ten thousand chips. Of course there will be a different price than for ten million chips! And it of course will be a lot higher, because 10K chips is like a single batch, whereas 10M chips is two years of non-stop production.
Nevermind the Toshiba (not IBM/Hitachi) 1.8-inch hard drives had existed for quite some time before Apple made the iPod. Hell, IBM/Hitachi's Microdrive (later used in the Mini) had been out for years. No one else saw their potential, so prior to the iPod the best you could get was a Nomad, which used 2.5-inch hard drives. After all, capacity was everything, right? Apple took a huge risk on a completely new and unproven product and bought their remaining stock. What is "anti-competitive" here?
As for your last paragraph, Microsoft's "superior engineering"? Nevermind that Apple's entire history back to the Apple II (and the Wozniak-designed controllers) has been about superior engineering, and Microsoft's has always been about purchasing/licensing/controlling other software and making it "good enough", all the way back to Microsoft BASIC.
I don't know what kind of crack I was on, but I suspect it was decaf.
it wouldn't be unheard of if they were actually dumping it on apple at or below production cost for the moment.
why? to ensure that they get at least something and that they get a huge cut of the market while still being able to run the factories while losing the least amount of money(what's the point in running a factory like that? to keep it in business so you can reap the rewards later when competition is less fierce and product cheaper to make, same thing happening with flat panels now).
of course this would make it hard for competitors who have to pay full price + profit margin for the memory chips because they can't buy so much that they can ensure the factorys existance alone.
now this might or might not violate competion laws in korea. usually flooding the market with loss doing products to get others out from the market is illegal, though it might be unsure if this is that kind of a thing even.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Dirty? Hell yeah.
Hell, no. Apple made a deal to buy all the drives they could make. They placed a big enough order that Toshiba brought up a second factory just for those drives. Nobody put a gun to Toshiba's head, and if someone else wanted to buy those drives, so what? Every deal has two sides, and if Toshiba would rather deal with a single customer for the first year (or more), that's their prerogative.
That while every other large coorperation will lie, cheat, and steal to get ahead -- Apple is somehow different.
Show me an example of Apple lying, cheating or stealing, cause this isn't it.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."