3 ms·

I can't remember the exact details but I remember a story at some point that they'd bought up basically all the world's manufacturing capacity of sapphires - I

by mcintyre1994 6y ago

I can't remember the exact details but I remember a story at some point that they'd bought up basically all the world's manufacturing capacity of sapphires - I think for TouchID. Their manufacturing scale is just insane.

redis_mlc 6y ago
Actually Apple does that to prevent competitors from being able to sell similar competing products. They also do that for classes of RAM, SSD, etc. Less important, they do that to avoid the need for a supplier to build another facility. Often suppliers will raise prices after a step threshold requires more capacity (a new factory) because of the hassle, risk and setup cost. One of the reasons that China took over the world's mfg. is that often they had pre-built factories already built. One engineer/entrepreneur in China financed and pre-built an entire chemical facility for a certain process. Talk about planning and faith. An example of how wrong things are in the USA is that it took 20 years to extend BART 10 miles with above-ground track (Milpitas and Berryessa/North San Jose stations.) https://abc7news.com/bart-south-bay-stations-silicon-valley-station-milpitas/6244949/ https://abc7news.com/bart-south-bay-stations-silicon-valley-...
GeekyBear 6y ago
There was a company that believed they had the tech to produce synthetic sapphire at the scale necessary for Apple to replace the Gorilla Glass on iPhones with synthetic sapphire. In that deal, Apple loaned the manufacturer the money needed to buy the necessary production equipment, however the manufacturer was unable to get the process to work at scale. >Apple announced a new factory in Arizona where its supplier, GT Advanced Technologies, would be loaned $578 million to produce huge synthetic sapphire crystals https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/3/18528920/sec-charges-apple-iphone-sapphire-supplier-gt-advanced-fraud https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/3/18528920/sec-charges-apple...

redis_mlc 6y ago

Actually Apple does that to prevent competitors from being able to sell similar competing products. They also do that for classes of RAM, SSD, etc. Less important, they do that to avoid the need for a supplier to build another facility. Often suppliers will raise prices after a step threshold requires more capacity (a new factory) because of the hassle, risk and setup cost. One of the reasons that China took over the world's mfg. is that often they had pre-built factories already built. One engineer/entrepreneur in China financed and pre-built an entire chemical facility for a certain process. Talk about planning and faith. An example of how wrong things are in the USA is that it took 20 years to extend BART 10 miles with above-ground track (Milpitas and Berryessa/North San Jose stations.) https://abc7news.com/bart-south-bay-stations-silicon-valley-station-milpitas/6244949/ https://abc7news.com/bart-south-bay-stations-silicon-valley-...

GeekyBear 6y ago

There was a company that believed they had the tech to produce synthetic sapphire at the scale necessary for Apple to replace the Gorilla Glass on iPhones with synthetic sapphire. In that deal, Apple loaned the manufacturer the money needed to buy the necessary production equipment, however the manufacturer was unable to get the process to work at scale. >Apple announced a new factory in Arizona where its supplier, GT Advanced Technologies, would be loaned $578 million to produce huge synthetic sapphire crystals https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/3/18528920/sec-charges-apple-iphone-sapphire-supplier-gt-advanced-fraud https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/3/18528920/sec-charges-apple...