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Apple’s rumored acquisition of Israeli flash storage company Anobit was confirmed today. Apple periodically buys smaller technology companies, such as Siri or Quattro Wireless, but rarely on the hardware side — with the notable recent exceptions of Intrinsity and P.A. Semi. Flash memory is found in virtually all of the company’s mobile devices and an ever-increasing share of its notebook computers. Apple currently buys more flash memory than any other company worldwide — about 23 percent of the global market — and the Anobit deal will likely help drive down the company’s already low production costs.
Comments
Sounds like a no-brainer decision to me.
DavenMathies - January 11, 2012
What is not clear in the article is that Anobit do not produce Flash themselves but design it and licence the design or have other manufacturers make it. They don’t have manufacturing facilities themselves.
Their tech is used by many others and this can be seen as a move to make Apple less dependant on Samsung and Toshiba as their main supplier of Flash
Boghog - January 11, 2012
This is bad news for every mobile device manufacturer who isn’t Apple. Anobit have some critical, and well patented, technology that increases both the reliability and performance of NAND memory.
The biggest question here is, with Apple having been the biggest user of NAND memory for the past five years, knowing how critical Anobit’s controllers are to high-performance devices, why somebody else (hello Samsung, don’t you manufacture NAND?) didn’t buy them first.
I’m sure Apple will (or be required) to honour all existing Anobit contracts but long term this can only result in a bigger price device (or narrow the profit margin) between iDevices and everybody else. And judging by the profits of Apple vs Everybody Else, this isn’t a good thing.
RobotPi - January 11, 2012
Hear that? That’s the sound of Samsung crying into their breakfast!
T1nman - January 11, 2012
Samsung is the cheating wife who just realized her errors.
westonp - January 11, 2012
Quality analogy.
T1nman - January 11, 2012
And yet somehow I doubt consumers will pay a penny less at checkout.
dark4181 - January 11, 2012
No of course not, but the bottom line for Apple will be lessened which they will hopefully use to develop new products… like a TV.
Stevezie - January 11, 2012
Apple’s model has been to hold prices and periodically increase specifications so you get more bang-for-buck for the same price – and this has worked tremendously well for them.
But that’s not to say Apple won’t need or want to drop prices in future. They don’t need to now because for all of Android’s ballooning market share, it’s not at the expense of Apple’s sales. But should this become a problem, dropping prices is usually a surefire way to increase sales.
RobotPi - January 11, 2012
if I got this right, they will keep the high price of their tech, but lower actual production cost and make more bilions? greedy?
who wins at the end? not us, the consumers, for sure :)
Lorda - January 12, 2012
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