“South Korea is investigating a flash memory supply deal between Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. and Apple Computer Inc. over pricing, officials at the Fair Trade Commission (FTC) said on Wednesday,” Reuters reports. “South Korean manufacturers of digital music players have complained Samsung is offering the chips used in Apple’s iPod MP3 players at an unfairly low price, putting them at a disadvantage.”
“News of the probe came a day after Apple said it would prepay Samsung and Hynix Semiconductor Inc. $500 million and $200 million, respectively, to secure flash memory chips for its market-leading iPod music players,” Reuters reports. “‘We are investigating whether Samsung has been unfairly supplying flash memory chips to Apple at cheaper prices than applied to domestic music player makers,’ a FTC spokesman said by telephone.”
Full article here.
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What exactly is “unfair” about selling flash memory to Apple at lower prices when Apple is buying 50 times more than anybody else? Which also-ran company or companies are whining? Is it ReignCom and/or Cowon or some other local firm that ordered about 100 units, because they didn’t get the same price as Apple did for buying 10 million? Do South Koreans understand bulk rates? Incentives for placing large orders? Hello?
What’s happening is that Korean music player makers are on the receiving end of a good old-fashioned ass-whopping from Apple and it seems that Apple intends only to keep escalating the punishment until there’s no more ass left to whoop, Korean or otherwise. ReignCom and/or Cowon, if they are indeed one of the complainers, and the rest of the crybabies involved ought to just join the wake; Microsoft, Real, Napster, Sony and many others are already there commiserating. Here, maybe this’ll help: 지금 종료하는. 자수.
[UPDATE: 11/23, 8:35am EST: Changed “Creative” to “ReignCom and/or Cowon.”]
Related articles:
Apple announces over 30 million iPods sold, reaches long-term supply agreements for flash memory – November 21, 2005
Apple drops Samsung NAND flash memory investment plan – October 15, 2005
Apple and Samsung face potential antitrust probe by Korean FTC over NAND flash pricing – October 07, 2005
Thank Apple for dramatically falling flash memory prices – October 03, 2005
Apple corners flash memory market with iPod nano – September 29, 2005
Disgruntled iPod also-rans accuse Samsung of ‘damage’ by selling Apple cheap NAND flash memory – September 29, 2005
Well I think those South Koreans should just be thankful they dont live in the North
I saw Veronica eat fried dog at the last party at Betty’s house.
Jughead, stop your making me laugh.
Too funny!
Make sure you copy-n-paste the last sentence into Sherlock’s Translation.
MDN
Creative is a Singapore company, so they cannot be one of the local South Korean firms complaining about the Apple-Samsung deal.
Being on the LOSING team is a be-atch ain’t it!? heh heh
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Glad I’m not the CEO of CREATIVE Doh! or any other Korean wanna be MP3 player manufacturer.
Speaking of things that SUCK
SONY is getting theirs in SPADES!
To prevent audiophiles from making multiple copies of the CDs, Sony (SNE) had programmed the Van Zant disk, and dozens of others, with a hidden code called a “rootkit” that secretly installs itself on hard drives when the CDs are loaded onto listeners’ PCs. Soon enough, hackers began designing viruses to take malicious advantage of the hidden program, and a Sony boycott had begun (see BW Online, 11/17/05, “Sony’s Copyright Overreach”).
GROWING OUTRAGE. Overnight, Get Right with the Man dropped to No. 1,392 on Amazon’s music rankings. By Nov. 22 — after the news made headlines and Sony was deep into damage control, pulling some 4.7 million copy-protected disks from the market — Get Right with the Man was even further from Amazon’s Top 40, plummeting to No. 25,802.
The wrath of fans killed Sony’s CD copy controls, with the company pulling 52 titles off retail shelves, beginning the week of Nov. 14. But the wrath of bands could be far worse for the company — and for efforts to protect content in general.
Singers and songwriters are increasingly expressing frustration at devices used by record companies to protect digital content from widespread theft that results when CDs are copied repeatedly or popular tracks are given away on peer-to-peer (P2P) networks, such as LimeWire and BitTorrent. Sony’s misstep has been bad for the company — and its effects could spread much further, should the consumer outcry gain traction with the recording artists who need to keep their fans happy if they want to sell records.
DROP IN SALES. In the beginning, it was cyber libertarians and outspoken consumer groups leading the charge against digital rights management (DRM). But the Sony rootkit debacle has brought the issue home even to digilliterates — including many of the artists themselves.
Read more at this link
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/nov2005/tc20051122_343542.htm?campaign_id=rss_tech
I love to see Apple win but competition is usually a good thing to have. I think one of the reasons OS X is so much better than Windows is because Apple is behind on Market share and almost HAS to be so much better in order to compete. However, that said, in Apple’s case since innovation is in their DNA, I think that they would keep coming out with better and better products even in the absence of competition. But the pitch at which they are innovate probably is affected by the presence of strong competition and sometimes someone else will come up with a good idea that you can incorporate or exceed in future product offerings.
Perhaps the Korean authorities should think this one through.
Samsung have signed a deal with Apple to sell a staggering quantity of flash memory at a discounted price which is commensurate with the quantity involved. It’s a perfectly normal way of doing business and I have no doubt that Samsung and every other Korean company negotiates quantity discounts from their suppliers too.
Apple have since signed similar deals with rival manufacturers of flash memory elsewhere in the world, the net effect being that Apple is committed to buying a significant proportion of the entire world’s production of large capacity flash memory.
Although Samsung’s memory is currently needed by Apple, Apple would still be able to get memory elsewhere if it finds that dealing with Koreans is too problematic.
The Korean government need to decide whether Korea is better off supplying most of the memory to the world’s biggest user of memory, or whether it’s interests are better served by selling a little memory to the companies who make alternative MP3 players that are rarely seen in outside of Korea.
As things stand, the Korean authorities are sending out very strong signals that they aren’t the sort of people for the rest of the world to do business with and I’m sure that Apple will be less prepared to make a critically important deal with Samsung in the future.
I haven’t read the full article, but why is the FTC involved? Where is the U.S. connection – other than Apple itself? This summary seems to say that this involves an “unfairness” to South Korean manufacturers only.
Hg Wells
I believe the article refers to the Korean FTC. The USA isn’t the only country to have such government bodies.
Go here: http://www.ftc.go.kr/eng/
I can’t believe MDN hasn’t hung shit on the Xbox yet.
Hmmm…
Apple drives up demand for flash RAM so we can finally give hard drives the boot and advance computers through a larger supply of these chips and a few crybabies (Creative) combined with the extortion wing of the South Korean government (FTC) try their luck at derailing the Apple train.
Well TOUGH APPLE’s!
Steve, I got my black turtleneck sweater, blue jeans and baseball bat ready to go to bash some skull.
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Mdn word: “except”
Communism from the north is rubbing off on the south.
The Dems are trying to bring it here to the USA.
Ron:
right on!
a government agency is interferring on behalf of business, not the ‘people’… .and that’s communism? Demorats aren’t doing anything in the shadow of the power grabbing repukes, pay more attention fellas. amazing how ‘ditto-heads’ spit out such knee jerks reactions, get a grip and a brain.
mw-book, does us all a favor read one, I’ll suggest one “The People’s History of the United States”, by Howard Zinn.
democrats = commies
Democrats = hypocrites
Hey davida, I’ll suggest another one:
“Do As I Say (Not As I Do): Profiles in Liberal Hypocrisy”
by Peter Schweizer
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0385513496/103-6197621-7318253?v=glance&n=283155&s=books&v=glance
This crap in South Korea is the SAME exact shit dem’s would be pulling if it were going on over here.
Open your eyes, mate!
They’re worried about flash memory when they have a crazy mo fo just up north?
지금 종료하는. 자수. = It ends now. Surrender.
“All your Hynix are belong to us!”
davida: “a government agency is interferring (first learn to spell) on behalf of business, not the ‘people’… .and that’s communism?” (second learn to think)
You betcha’. Since when did communism (in practice) ever do anything for the people? You must either be totally ignorant of history (recent history included – like today in Cuba) or a dem-suck-up-one-off-ditto-head.
The French (great liberal politicians and philosophers that they are) have a test for monumental thoughts that roughly translates as, “Sure it works in practice but does it work in theory?” Are you French by some chance? If so just go do what you surrender monkies do best. Give up. You obviously “think” (and I use the term loosely) that anyone who does not agree with you (another typical lib platform) is just another ditto-head. Give me your bank account number and I will deposit two bits to get you a real education (come on… start double clicking those email links).
davida “Demorats aren’t doing anything in the shadow of the power grabbing repukes”
You mean the repukes who have been voted in since ’92? Wow! Sounds like sour grapes to the max… Oh the injustice of it all! Somebody (over half the country) didn’t agree with me. And don’t give me that electoral college crap.
This is about computers. Not politics. And if it does creep into politics because of the specific nature of the story please keep your inflamatory remarks to yourself or you will get flamed for your gross inadequacy and brainless idolatry (you wannabe college professor).
Here, maybe this’ll help: 지금 종료하는. 자수
Translation:
Now is the end. Surrender
Yeah, no kidding. No laws were likely broken. But all the babies are jumping up and down screaming “No fair. No FAIR!”
지금 종료하는. 자수
Uh, while I agree the investigation is probably politically motivated by jealous competitors, MDN is looking mighty silly with this Google-translated non-sensical Korean.
The above phrase doesn’t make ANY sense grammatically. Correctly translated, it says something on the order of “Now [missing noun] which is ending. The confession.”
“종료하는” is an adjective (not a noun), e.g. “concluding” story. As it stands, the so-called sentence in grammatical terms is basically a single adjective.
“자수” can mean surrender as in “turn yourself in to the police” and doesn’t mean surrender in the sense of “surrender or die.” In this case, it’s not even a verb, just a single noun, like telling someone to pick up a case of beer at the supermarket by saying, “Budweiser.”
The lesson? If you’re going to ridicule someone in another language, don’t rely on machine translators or you’ll end up ridiculing yourself. Badly.
So here’s a suggestion about what you really want to say….”이제 끝났다. 포기해라.” which means, “It’s over now. Give up.”