Wednesday, August 5th 2026
Apple Scrambles for DRAM, CXMT Reportedly Rejects Negotiations
Apple is one of the largest supply chain operators in the world, maintaining a vast network of suppliers and manufacturing capacity. However, even a company of its stature is struggling amid the current DRAM shortage. According to Tim Culpan's Culpium newsletter, Apple is scrambling to secure DRAM just weeks before its annual iPhone update cycle. With less than six weeks until the launch of the iPhone 18 series and the iPhone Ultra, assemblers are rushing to place DRAM orders to secure new supplies. The Cupertino-based giant primarily relies on DRAM from Micron, whose LPDDR5X memory is used in a range of devices and is the main source for the next-generation iPhone. SK hynix and Samsung are also suppliers, but Micron remains the primary choice.
Interestingly, another report has surfaced about Apple's efforts to secure more DRAM. The company has reportedly entered negotiations with Chinese memory giant CXMT for LPDDR5X memory needed for its current product lineup. Apple attempted to negotiate better pricing with CXMT, likely due to the volume it plans to purchase, but CXMT rejected the proposed lower price. This is one of the first instances where negotiation power lies with the suppliers, as CXMT is producing one of the world's most in-demand commodities and is offering it at market rates without discounts.
Chinese companies, including hyperscalers, neo clouds, and AI labs, are buying up all the available DRAM that CXMT is manufacturing. As a result, any output CXMT could provide to Apple is already reserved for Chinese customers willing to pay the current market price, rather than seeking discounts. As DRAM becomes even scarcer next year, this leverage in the supply chain is likely to increase in favor of DRAM manufacturers. It remains unclear whether Apple has accepted these regular market prices.
Sources:
Culpium, DDaily
Interestingly, another report has surfaced about Apple's efforts to secure more DRAM. The company has reportedly entered negotiations with Chinese memory giant CXMT for LPDDR5X memory needed for its current product lineup. Apple attempted to negotiate better pricing with CXMT, likely due to the volume it plans to purchase, but CXMT rejected the proposed lower price. This is one of the first instances where negotiation power lies with the suppliers, as CXMT is producing one of the world's most in-demand commodities and is offering it at market rates without discounts.
45 Comments on Apple Scrambles for DRAM, CXMT Reportedly Rejects Negotiations
how does it feel to get your own medicine served? Boohoo cry me a river :-)
I bet Apple is gonna run off to the principal in the White House and complain about
the bad Chinese that dear to strong arm it.
No RAM No FUN
That's a shame, they can go back to buying from scummy micron, they suit each other
$400 device production costs and then sell it for 3-4x that much?
And they dare to ask for discount to push margins even further.
Chinese brothers are not so dumb. Why sell lower when nothing bites your ass?
USA: China is spying on us! China is tearing our economy apart by manufacturing everything for us for low prices! We have almost no electronics production in USA because of China! We moved our fabs there because they are too cheap! They are being cheap on purpose! Chinese hardware is bad! Not safe and poor quality! We therefore forbid Chinese chips! And we impose tarriffs on everything else to come from them Chinese hands!
China: Soon we shall be making our own chips and in few years we shalll prevail and become major player in the world. There's no Chinese hardware that is made in USA but vast majority of US thinkgs is made in China. USA may go ahead with the tarriffs and bite themselves in the ass for making everything their own people much more expensive.
USA: (Meanwhile a US company with no reported profits along with another US company that pumped funds into the first one causes a global market crisis.)
USA: Oh, China, our brothers from the East! We did not mean that ... Great apologies! Your hardware is not that bad. You have not been proven to have implemented backdoors like our NSA did. We asked the greatest POTUS of all times to allow us buy chips from you, good Chinese people. Uhm, got any chips to spare?
China: Sure, here, for a standard and fair market price.
USA: You greedy Chinese scums! You ain't no better than us Americans! Your chips ain't no better than our Micron's! We'll tarriff you to death and impose restrictions on everyone that is trading with you!
And kids, what's the lessons learned from this?
1. If you desperately lack specific goods you really need and someone have them in stock, you're really not in position suitable for negotitations.
2. If you keep imposing economical penalties (long-term) on someone for enough time, ultimately, they will prevail and become more successful than you (they will adjust and use circumstances to their advantage).
I think Chinese memory manufacturers are going to come out ahead in the longer term, as the big 3 have been ignoring the consumer market to keep the AI bubble inflated.
Silicon vendors like Intel/AMD takes sand and sells the resulting product for hundreds, even thousands of dollars. Where's the outcry in that?
You aren't taking fixed costs into account. 90% of businesses fail, and half of what's left over barely tread water. If you get past that and succeed, the ENORMOUS amount of work to get there, you deserve the reward.
Apple isn't making anywhere near $2000-400 = $1600 you are suggesting. There's Research and Development, their own employees to pay, factories that develop products, after sales support. I know the basics because I made a product to sell. Oftentimes selling it at 2x raw materials, you aren't even making money.
Sure they aren't being a charity to you, but they are not. Don't buy what you don't NEED. Need isn't computers by any chance. My personal computers are 5+ years old. My laptop is 9 years old. They work perfectly fine.
Apple: s2.q4cdn.com/470004039/files/doc_financials/2025/ar/_10-K-2025-As-Filed.pdf
McDonalds: www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/mcdonalds-reports-fourth-quarter-and-full-year-2025-results-302685288.html
Of course, they deserve to be successful, but not for a minute compare them to small company or business trying to produce something and survive on market. Most business do fail, but it is large corporations that crushes any competiton on the market mercilessly.
Heck, even this situation - Apple will survive, but many smaller / botique PC makers wont. End result: less choice for customer, higher prices and bigger profits for Apple, Dell, HP etc...
Sorry for off-topic,but I have to: I fail to comprehend how people can not see how this late-stage capitalism is dangerous to civilization... PC and memory are last of our problems, but they are so obvious example. Now translate that to food, water and energy and give it a thought... Because it is same relations and same issues in those sectors too.
How to create regulations that protect the profiteers.That "excellent" supply chain might be the result of corruption as much the problem with the manufacturing/supply of RAM in 2000, 2016 and 2025 was and is a fake crisis which lead to profiteering.
NVD has more money and can afford high prices of RAM while AMD and Intel has less money for DDR,,LPDDR, HBM so will come with lower numbers on the market while NVD will just dominate the market on GPU, servers with HBM and APUs by sheer numbers.
R&D, own employees, factories and support is a must in almost any company that does make a product.
Selling anything at cost 2x of required materials is insane. That's not business but a charity.
Over the decades, I keep hearing about how Apple had to develop everything from scratch, disregarding facts they stole/bought existing designs (Xerox)
and even used open source (BSD) software which they modified and later served as locked proprietary OS of their own. Yeah, BSD license was that stupid.
But then maybe there'll be a revolution where we all go out and touch grass
Saving comes from fracturing the DDR cartel and the whole chain of profiteers.
Don't hold your breath, for that long, you might get blue lips.
There is a reason why present-day left-wing intellectuals huddle in the fields of culture and psychoanalysis, as they are professional critics rather than people who can actually build things. After the fall of the USSR, they have nothing left, and everything in Marxist political economy is dead. Left-wing critics speak loudly to their western audience, but remain deeply marginal to the targets of their criticism.
Big tech is already busy enough just making phones, chips, and computers that help people, and they want to help more people and make more money, so how could they have time to care about any of this nonsense.
However, leftist theory is interesting enough as a word puzzle game, and they are foliage plants for sale of the capitalist world. () capitalism is the true source of the () problem. lol
I would start with Cold War and chaos that follow. Is never black and white. Is always the grey that weighs more.
In the end of the day DDR cartel impose prices twice by now as much as in an economy drawn by a totalitarian regime, is nothing democratic about it, and it has very little to do with the so called "demand."IMO
whether it is the cold war camp opposition concept of capitalist countries versus communist countries, or capitalism as a mode of production. This is an ambiguous concept.
Here, our critic of capitalism clearly target bigtech, while bigtech is merely engaging in legal free exchange and has nothing that can be called guilt.
As for your argument that both sides guilt, this is a concept generated by the cold war, targeting all capitalist camp countries. Somehow it became confused and traced back to Nazi Germany, even though Nazi's political and economy was closer to the USSR than the US and had nothing to do with the cold war.
It attributes all of humanity's guilt to capitalism rather than to the individuals, especially politicians, who committed those wrongdoings, ignoring the fact that communist guilt was directly caused by the implementation of communism. This is a classic straw man.
many human affairs are defined as capitalism, property right, free markets, free exchange, currency, wage labor all become targets of rejection for communism. These concepts are prevalent in countries defined as capitalist and are considered capitalist, but does this mean there is anything wrong with these concepts?
Communism is a principled opposition to these concepts, and Marx used the term capitalism to summarize those prevalent human affairs he opposed. Therefore, capitalism represents universal humanity, whereas communism represents anti-humanity. Just as in christianity, sin is the absence of good rather than a binary opposite to good, communism and capitalism cannot be opposed to each other.
By the universality of capitalism, I do not mean that the current west can represent universal values, but rather that the term capitalism as used by communists and leftists has such a broad meaning that it encompasses most of human nature and existing social realities; even though these matters are not unique to the west, they only use this term when criticizing the west.The reason you think capitalism is like feudalism is because they are just very similar, excluding personal dependence and the right to private war.
and it's fine.
A difference in the feudal era was that urban goods and services were mainly provided by guilds and thus monopolized by a few. Now except for a few professions like lawyers and doctors that inherited features of feudalism, places no restrictions on most industries, and in addition, the government monopolizes social services.
you can pay for what you want, and the goods exchanged with others are private property protected by law. Although there is no clear definition, this is the free market, and the situation seems unchanged.
the critique of capitalism is a consistent and naturally evolved result of left-wing thought, with its primary origin in Marx. For an ant, it can be family formicidae or phylum arthropoda. You may consider your ideological system independent of communism and unique, but that does not prevent me from having a broader definition of the term communism, which can differ from yours.
As for the late-stage capitalism you claim, I actually do not know what it is; it seems to assume the current world is in a late-stage, implying that the world will soon enter an unknown new realm. For Marx, this clearly means communism, while for left-wing readers eager to draw a line with communism, they need to leave this unknown new realm unmentioned and be content with criticizing capitalism. So does your term late-stage capitalism have any practical meaning if taken out of Marx's context.