Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick is urging Apple to find other solutions to AI-driven chip supply crunch other than using Chinese memory, reports The Wall Street Times.
After a tour of the new Apple Advanced Manufacturing Center in Houston, he said, “The Trump administration is not in favor of that.” Lutnick added there must be other ways to fix the problem, but stressed “It’s not great American companies using Chinese memory.”
The Wall Street Journal has previously claimed Apple has been testing memory chips from China’s ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) on such products as iPhones and MacBooks. However, I’m skeptical.
Why? Apple has been hoping that memory made by China’s CXMT could prove a lower-cost solution to deal with the ongoing memory shortage and pricing. However, that seems to have backfired, as CXMT is demanding what Samsung gets paid for RAM, according to Korea’s Daily Digital.
The article says Apple recently negotiated the unit price of mobile DRAM such as CXMT and LPDDR5X to relieve the manufacturing cost pressure of the next iPhone and smart device lineup. However, the unit price reduction was rejected as “CXMT adhered to a higher or similar unit price compared to the supply price of Samsung Electronics or SK Hynix,” per the Daily Digital.
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Article provided with permission from AppleWorld.Today
