Comment by Analemma_
4 months ago
RAM prices started climbing more than 18 months ago. Apple’s contracts are long-term but not that long-term: they probably just expired. (If you assume a 3-year contract, 18 months is how long it would take on average for a specific market shock to hit you)
That's a double edged sword. Assuming it's an 18 month contract, even when ram prices do go back to "normal" it's a year and a half until Apple has savings to pass onto to customers.
Raising prices allows Apple to reduce demand, possibly creating some flexibility in the durations of the current contracts.
If Apple knows it's been overpaying, you can be sure that they will leverage that in future negotiations.
Right — if we can know how long ago the contracts were agreed we can predict how much more the price will have to rise, because 20% sounds like the beginning of the problem.
Apple is notorious for their prices being extremely stable for a given SKU. If anything, this is Apple getting out ahead of where they expect memory prices to be long-term, so they can rip off the band-aid once and don’t have to do it again.
Well, hopefully :-)
I am personally working on the assumption that prices will go up again this year or say in January, though as I have an M1 Max here it's not massively urgent.
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