- Yesterday at 22:01 (Updated yesterday at 23:00)
- Apple News
- Alexandre Godard
-
React
Apple’s SSD supplier is currently in a delicate situation and could make the decision to increase its prices in the coming months. As a result, Apple would have to pay more and could therefore increase the selling price of the upcoming iPhone in 2022. This is a simple assumption that we hope will prove to be false.
Contamination problems at Apple’s SSD supplier
If one of the most discussed topics for 24 months now in the world of technology is the global shortage of semiconductors, we must not forget that there are other problems which can also have serious consequences.
This time, it is on the side of the SSD storage providers that you have to turn. As noted by TrendForce, two of the world’s leading SSD suppliers (Western Digital and Kioxia) are currently experiencing major production problems.
According to the latest news, they suffered huge contaminations at the NAND production facilities in two factories in Japan in January. Western Digital claims to have lost 6.5 exabytes of BiCS 3D NAND flash storage.
No need to get lost with complex terms, you just have to remember that part of the production is unusable and that this will create a hole in the delivery schedule. As a reminder, Western Digital and Kioxia together represent no less than 30% of global SSD production.
The concern behind this whole story is that the two companies could decide to increase their prices by around 10% in the second half of 2022. A price increase that directly concerns Apple given that it is its main supplier in this market. domain. The iPhone 13, iPad Pro and even the latest MacBook Pro are equipped with SSD storage from Western Digital and Kioxia.
A slight increase of 10% that could turn into a huge sum of money for Apple to spend more when buying a future contract. From there we are entitled to wonder if this will not end up being reflected in the price of the iPhone 14… We think it will not be the case but we will have to check all this in September , release date of the new Apple iPhone.