Memory costs are up. Apple and Microsoft passed the bill to customers. Smaller electronics companies cannot do this because nobody wants their products enough to pay more.
This is being called an existential crisis. Existential implies these companies had existence worth preserving. A company that dies because RAM got expensive was already dying. The memory shortage just gave it a name.
Apple raised prices on MacBooks and iPads. Customers complained on Twitter and bought them anyway. Microsoft did the same with Surface devices. Same result. Turns out when you make things people actually want, you can charge whatever the f*ck you want and they'll create elaborate justifications for why it's worth it.
The smaller players are different. They were selling on price alone. Now their one advantage evaporated and they're shocked to learn that competing on margins in consumer electronics was a suicide pact with a flexible timeline. The memory shortage just moved up the date.
Retail traders are currently scanning lists of distressed electronics manufacturers, convinced they've found the next turnaround story. They're building spreadsheets. Calculating theoretical upside if memory prices normalize. Typing "undervalued" into Discord servers at 2 AM. They will buy these stocks. They will hold through bankruptcy. They will call it market manipulation when their shares get delisted.
Apple will be fine because Apple is always fine. Microsoft will be fine because enterprise customers don't care what anything costs. The smaller companies will either get acquired for parts or stop existing, and in six months nobody will remember their names. The memory shortage is not the crisis. The crisis is building a business model that collapses when one input cost moves against you. But existential crisis sounds better in a headline than we were already f*cked.
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