TSMC “Apple-first” 3nm policy leads to AMD and Qualcomm mutiny

Re:TSMC “Apple-first” 3nm policy leads to AMD and Qualcomm m... by tomxor on Thursday November 25, 2021 @11:07AM (#29342441)

Once they were selling a large enough quantity to begin with they can gamble their profits on overstock for future production, wiping out future supplies for competitors... at which point it's more of a guarantee, if there are multiple viable products and you remove all but one, consumers have no choice.

These are separate things (getting to the point of large scale production and blocking your competitors), e.g they could have played fair with the same initial success without excessive overstocking, allowing their competitors to continue competing and letting market forces decide, and letting suppliers gradually match current demand.

In short, there is no advantage to overstocking to such an excess other than to block your competitors. But you can only do so once you have a foot in the door and enough money to do so.

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Re:TSMC “Apple-first” 3nm policy leads to AMD and Qualcomm m... by JiNCMG on Thursday November 25, 2021 @01:43PM (#29343799)

But there wasn't and will never be any overstock at Apple since Tim Cook started working there. In 2008 Apple still had Texas warehouses with old beige Mac but all of the Mac produced in the Tim Cook era do not last more than a 2 - 3 weeks in a warehouse. This includes components and this is why every January after an iPhone release the business journalists start predicting Apple's downfall because they lower their part orders for display, memory, etc. They don't let any of that stuff sit in a warehouse... EVER.

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Re:TSMC “Apple-first” 3nm policy leads to AMD and Qualcomm m... by hinkley on Thursday November 25, 2021 @11:55AM (#29342864)

But did they overstock?

What I recall is them being production limited over and over again because their best wasn’t always good enough to stay ahead of demand. Nobody has talked about them hoarding.

Blocking competition was a benefit, but not the goal.

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Re:TSMC “Apple-first” 3nm policy leads to AMD and Qualcomm m... by thrashh on Thursday November 25, 2021 @12:13PM (#29343042)

But they probably discussed it happening in a meeting. Therefore it also became a goal.

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