Apple’s Low-Cost Strategy + Taiwan + Panasonic

choi

(1) Nick Wingfield, Apple's Lower Prices Complicate Its Competitors' Calculations; Apple pushes down its costs for its most crucial parts. New York Times, Oct 24, 2011.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/2 ... ingfield&st=cse

Quote:

"Apple has also shown a willingness to tap into its huge war chest — $82 billion in cash and marketable securities last quarter — to take big gambles by locking up supplies of parts for years, as it did in 2005 when it struck a five-year, $1.25 billion deal with manufacturers to secure flash memory chips for its iPods and other devices. By buying up manufacturing capacity ahead of time, Apple forces its competitors to scramble for the parts that are still available, raising costs for their products, analysts say. Apple is the biggest buyer of flash memory chips in the world, according to the research firm iSuppli.

"The most credible challenge to the iPad is likely to come from Amazon’s $199 Kindle Fire tablet, which goes on sale in November.

My comment:
(a) Though it is not apparent online, in print there is a separate paragraph, at web page 1, that starts with "But analysts and industry executives say Apple’s." Read from here onwards.
(b) Summary: analysists last years took a "collective gasp" at the new MacBook Air ultrathin notebook, and were "stunned" on learning iPad 1's $499 starting price early last year.

(2) Crystal Hsu, E Ink Posted Record-High Q3 Earnings. Taipei Times, Oct 25, 2011 (available now)
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/ ... 11/10/25/2003516589
("The Kindle Fire, which has a seven-inch screen, uses E Ink’s fringe field switching (FFS) technology")

Note: For FFS, see liquid crystal display
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_crystal_display
(section 5 Active matrix technologies: section 5.3 Advanced fringe field switching (AFFS))

(3) Press release: TSMC 28nm Technology in Volume Production. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, Oct 24, 2011.
http://www.tsmc.com/english/newsEvents/index.htm

My comment: The takeaway is Altera, AMD, Nvidia, Qualcomm and Xilinx are all on board, but not Apple.

(4) Paul Mozur, HTC Open to Further Acquisitions. Wall Street Journal, Oct 24, 2011
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB ... 44563772847424.html

(5) Juro Osawa, Panasonic to Scrap Plan for Japan Solar-Cell Plant. Wall Street Journal, Oct 24, 2011 (print day).

There is no need to read the entire reports for (4) and (5). I will add to these two tomorrow, as the newspaper in the library is stolen.