Get Better Gear!

Premier Sponsors

Other World Computing

TechRestore

Top 5 Free Apps

Release Date: August 05, 2009
Genre: Games
Release Date: May 22, 2009
Genre: Games
Release Date: August 29, 2009
Genre: Games
Release Date: March 27, 2009
Release Date: August 07, 2009

iTunes New Music Releases

Release Date: September 29, 2009
Genre: Rock
Release Date: September 20, 2009
Release Date: September 15, 2009
Release Date: August 25, 2009
Genre: Rock
Release Date: August 25, 2009

Top 5 Paid Apps

Release Date: April 22, 2009
StickWars $0.99
Release Date: March 31, 2009
Genre: Games
Bloons $0.99
Release Date: April 05, 2009
Genre: Games

Discover New Music

  • Pretty Hate Machine

    • 8 out of 10
    • Nine Inch Nails
    • For years I wanted to make music that sounded like something between Love and Rockets and Ministry. In 1989, Trent Reznor beat me to it with this genre-defining album, and it smacked me upside the hea
  • Goodbye Jumbo

    • 8 out of 10
    • World Party
    • Released in 1990, World Party's

  • Spanks for the Memories

    • 8 out of 10
    • Asylum Street Spankers
    • The Asylum Street Spankers are...well...The Spankers. Hailing from Austin, where I saw them live dozens of times, the band played entirely acousti

  • Physical Graffiti

    • 10 out of 10
    • Led Zeppelin
    • This album bears every flavor of genius from the five records that came before. It is, I believe, the band's finest. With Physical Graffiti, Zep came raging back to their musical home territory -- har
  • An Evening with George Shearing & Mel Torm�

    • 10 out of 10
    • Mel Torm� & George Shearing
    • Of the three men who taught me how to sing, the last was Mel Torme. Apparently, Mel Torme is a joke to anyone more than a decade older than me, a living parody of a Vegas crooner. But I stumbled on th

Reader Specials

Visit Deals On The Web for the best deals on all consumer electronics, iPods, and more!

News

Prices Up For Manufacturers, Down For Consumers in Wake of Apple-Samsung Deal

While no one knows exactly how much of a discount Apple received from Samsung for the NAND flash memory chips used in the iPod nano, the fallout from that deal is well-known: Supplies have become severely constrained to the point that 200 minor MP3 player manufacturers in Asia have gone out of business because they can't get parts.

The New York Times' Damon Darlin published a report on the situation Thursday, citing comments from iSupppli Corp. analyst Nam Hyung Kim to back up such claims. Mr. Darlin notes that estimates for what Apple is paying for Samsung's flash memory range from US$85 to $120, which would be somewhere around a 30% discount.

Even though manufacturers face trouble getting supplies and have seen higher prices, consumers continue to enjoy watching the price of flash-using devices fall. With the iPod nano doubling as a file storage device, companies that sell flash storage drives have had to drop their prices to compete. As Gartner analyst Joe Unsworth told Mr. Darlin: "A 4GB flash drive isn't stylish and trendy, and you can't use it to play music."

And while the micro hard drives used in the iPod and iPod mini continue to be cheaper than flash drives with comparable storage space, Mr. Darlin notes that in 2006, 4GB flash memory chips will actually cost less than 4GB micro hard drives.

For more on the current trends in flash memory and the fight over which type of storage will make its way into cell phones, please see Mr. Darlin's article.

Post Your Comments

  Remember Me  Forgot your password?

Not a member? Register now. You can post comments without logging in, but they'll show up as a "guest" post.

Commenting is not available in this section entry.