The dark satanic rumour mill has manufactured a hell on earth yarn claiming that the Fruity cargo cult Apple has been planning to fight its rivals by buying up all the mobile DRAM it can find and forcing its them to starve.
TF Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo reckons Job’s Mob has been paying daft money for DRAM to keep it out of the paws of its rivals. Apple can soak up daft memory prices, take a margin hit and keep its device pricing steady while rivals choke.
This is only possible because Apple has a cash pile the size of a small country.
The MacBook Neo launch at $599 is being held up as proof it is willing to play the long game. The pricing puts Job’s Mob within touching distance of a $30 billion laptop opportunity in the $600-$800 bracket, tied to annual sales of 50 million units.
A South Korea-based source claims Job’s Mob has been buying up “all available mobile DRAM on the market at extremely high prices, even at the cost of operating profit losses” to block competitors from getting enough chips. If true, it is less product strategy and more siege warfare.
There are signs the wider supply chain is already twitching. MediaTek and Qualcomm are said to have cut 4nm production for low and mid-tier phones, trimming about 20,000 to 30,000 wafers, or between 15 million and 20 million mobile chips.
Samsung has reportedly hiked prices in South Korea for the 512GB and 1TB tablet variants, as well as the Galaxy S25 Edge, Galaxy Z Fold 7, and Galaxy Flip 7.
Job’s Mob chief executive Tim Cook has already flagged memory chips and TSMC’s choked 3nm capacity as constraints on an earnings call. Now the vibe is that Job’s Mob is using its wallet to bulldoze through the bottlenecks and leave everyone else counting scraps.
On the device side, rivals with thinner margins get forced into grim choices. They either raise handset and tablet prices, cut specs like RAM and storage, slow production or delay launches, which feeds into higher average selling prices and lower unit shipments. IDC explicitly flags that memory inflation can reverse the “flagship specs for cheap” trend and push OEMs towards price rises and spec cuts, with downside scenarios showing smartphone shipments contracting while prices rise.
If phone makers cannot secure enough memory on sensible terms, they trim builds, which can ripple into reduced orders for MediaTek and Qualcomm’s 4nm mid-range chips that sit in those cheaper handsets.
For the memory vendors, this is Christmas. When a buyer with Job’s Mob’s wallet shows up willing to pay premiums and lock in volume, it strengthens suppliers’ bargaining power across the whole mobile DRAM stack and encourages more long-term, allocation-style deals that freeze out smaller customers. That sits on top of a broader trend TrendForce has been tracking, with DRAM contract prices surging on constrained supply and big buyers using agreements to secure allocation.
For PCs and other consumer kit, it adds more pressure even if the hoarding is “mobile” memory, because it reinforces the same industry behaviour. Suppliers steer limited capacity towards the highest-margin products and the safest contracts, leaving everyone else fighting for the leftovers and pricing getting jumpier, not calmer.
If Job’s Mob can absorb some costs, keep shelves stocked, and hold pricing steadier than Android OEMs, it gets a market-share tailwind while others look expensive and hard to buy, which turns the tables on those who know Apple gear is overpriced.
Regulators and angry rivals might start muttering about market abuse if the “buy it all to starve the rest” story hardens into evidence rather than rumour, but in the short term, the market impact is simple: scarcer memory, pricier devices, more spec downgrades and a lot more people staring at product pages wondering why 12GB is suddenly “premium” again.
