Maybe Apple is willing (it's certainly able) to pay a slightly higher price to get priority access to the supply.
Apple probably pays less than other manufacturers because of the size of the order. If you were a manufacturer, you'd probably prefer to make one huge sale than to negotiate dozens of smaller ones.
That's how its been reported in the past, but not just huge sales, but huge sales long in advance at a time with prices are lowest. This is where Tim Cook is said to shine. I have to wonder where Apple would've gotten during the Steve Jobs era if not for Tim Cook.
If you buy massive orders a long long time in advance, a company can match their production capacity to your needs at a very low risk; you are basically subsidizing their future production for future clients, thus increasing their future profits. So, its a win for Apple and a win for those producing companies. Of course, this has an impact in shutting out everyone that's not Apple.
Maybe Apple is willing (it's certainly able) to pay a slightly higher price to get priority access to the supply.
Apple probably pays less than other manufacturers because of the size of the order. If you were a manufacturer, you'd probably prefer to make one huge sale than to negotiate dozens of smaller ones.
That's how its been reported in the past, but not just huge sales, but huge sales long in advance at a time with prices are lowest. This is where Tim Cook is said to shine. I have to wonder where Apple would've gotten during the Steve Jobs era if not for Tim Cook.
Of course, this has an impact in shutting out everyone that's not Apple.
It does, and we cold debate the merits of when (or if) this can become anticompetitive.
For instance, remember when the floods hit Thailand where most HDDs are manufactured thereby severely reducing supply for the entire world? I think Apple got lucky because they had been moving heavily toward NAND, but budget PC makers were hit hard with constrained volume and at a higher price, where they already make little to no profit. If Apple was still relying on HDD and they needed all (or nearly all) the HDDs that could be produced, would it be fair for every other if Macs were the only PCs that could still be produced for a year because of contracts that included a certain volume of units for a given timeframe?
Maybe Apple is willing (it's certainly able) to pay a slightly higher price to get priority access to the supply.
Apple probably pays less than other manufacturers because of the size of the order. If you were a manufacturer, you'd probably prefer to make one huge sale than to negotiate dozens of smaller ones.
That's how its been reported in the past, but not just huge sales, but huge sales long in advance at a time with prices are lowest. This is where Tim Cook is said to shine. I have to wonder where Apple would've gotten during the Steve Jobs era if not for Tim Cook.
Of course, this has an impact in shutting out everyone that's not Apple.
It does, and we cold debate the merits of when (or if) this can become anticompetitive.
For instance, remember when the floods hit Thailand where most HDDs are manufactured thereby severely reducing supply for the entire world? I think Apple got lucky because they had been moving heavily toward NAND, but budget PC makers were hit hard with constrained volume and at a higher price, where they already make little to no profit. If Apple was still relying on HDD and they needed all (or nearly all) the HDDs that could be produced, would it be fair for every other if Macs were the only PCs that could still be produced for a year because of contracts that included a certain volume of units for a given timeframe?
Actually I personally dealt with this situation, and customer who have long term strategic relationship with the suppliers did okay. 60% of the world supply of HDD's were offline, most it was WD, and a number of tier 2 suppliers who affected Seagate, Hitachi, and Toshiba. The HDD suppliers screwed distribution channels they did not get supply and anyone buying from distribution had issues, the Tier 1 OEM like Apple and such were all on allocations. The company I (not PCs) worked for we got supply, but none of our competitors since they either were not strategic with the HDD companies or they were buying form distribution. During this 6 month period we shipped more products with HDD then we even had in the past, we actually picked up business during this time since we have supply and our competitors did not did not. Pricing did go up, to the OEMs bit no where near what if did for distribution customers and non-strategic customers. I heard HP and Apple were okay, but Dell, Acer and such did hurt since they always buy on price and move business around solely on price.
People who claim that Nintendo should stop making hardware and focus on software seem to forget how well that approach worked for Sega and Atari. Who? Exactly.
The folks who claimed that Sony and Microsoft ripped everything off from Nintendo and Nintendo should sue them ... all right Never mind that Atari preceded the NES and Milton-Bradley preceded the Gameboy. Or that the Playstation and XBox always were ahead of Nintendo products in CPU, OS, graphics, streaming capability and storage media and still are. By contrast Nintendo still can't even manage an online store properly. Nintendo fell so far behind with their OS that they actually went to Cyanogen, asking them to make a closed down version of Android for the Switch initially, because Android was far ahead of the OS that they were using for the DS and the Wii. When Cyanogen refused - objecting to the closed source thing - Nintendo had to hire out and create a new OS from scratch, which delayed the Switch by a year. And their new OS is STILL far behind the XBox and Playstation in terms of performance and capability. Lots of third party developers have abandoned Nintendo entirely because they are unable to hobble titles that run fine on Playstation, XBox and Steam down to what it would take to run on Nintendo. And the Nintendo Switch isn't even as powerful as the Nvidia Shield Android TV set top box, which gives 4K output (the switch is only 1080p, not even 2K).
Also, comparing Nintendo to Apple just isn't fair. Apple: the biggest company in the history of the world. Nintendo: they make video game consoles and a few (aging) video game franchises. The Wii, the best selling product in Nintendo's history, sold 102 million units. And this was over the life of the console WHICH WAS SEVEN YEARS. After that, the Gameboy Advance (thanks to the Pokemon craze) which sold 81 million units way back in 2001, and the 3DS selling 66 million, and it has been on the market since 2011. The original NES sold 61 million way back in the 80s, and no other hardware of theirs reached 50 million.(SNES 49 million, N64 32 million). And oh yes, you DO NOT want to compare the average selling price and profit margin for a Nintendo gaming system to that for an iPhone, or even an Apple Watch, iPad or iPod. And that speaks nothing of the HUGE margin that Apple gets on their Macs, and I would imagine that Apple sells more Macs annually than Nintendo does consoles.
Nintendo, despite their huge global cultural impact, really is a small company in a niche industry. The percentage of households that own a PC or smartphone dwarfs the percentage that owns a gaming console, and always has.
Question: why is this about the Nintendo Switch? If there isn't enough NAND to go around, shouldn't there be supply constraints on everyone, not just one product from one company? And if it's because Nintendo doesn't have the same standing in the NAND market, and has to wait for sloppy seconds from the smartphone manufacturers, why isn't the story that Nintendo's supply chain is flawed? Why is it about "Those mean other companies are taking my NAND"?
This sounds like someone is trying to shift the blame for problems with their supply chain away from Nintendo.
Question: why is this about the Nintendo Switch? If there isn't enough NAND to go around, shouldn't there be supply constraints on everyone, not just one product from one company? And if it's because Nintendo doesn't have the same standing in the NAND market, and has to wait for sloppy seconds from the smartphone manufacturers, why isn't the story that Nintendo's supply chain is flawed? Why is it about "Those mean other companies are taking my NAND"?
This sounds like someone is trying to shift the blame for problems with their supply chain away from Nintendo.
Your defensive response seems to perceive that Nintendo is somehow making comments that reflect badly on Apple, whether purposefully or not. This is certainly not the case.
Also, with supply chain as is everything else, component manufacturers respond to whoever pays them the most money. Case in point: Samsung versus LG and HTC for Qualcomm's business this year. Qualcomm only had the ability to manufacture so many Snapdragon 835 chips because it relies on a new process, meaning the machinery necessary to make them were in short supply. What did they do? Give the entire initial run of Snapdragon 835 SOCs to Samsung, forcing LG to launch the G6 with last year's Snapdragon 821 and HTC to delay their U11 flagship by 2 months. Why? Because Samsung will sell more than twice as many Galaxy S8 devices as LG and HTC will of the G6 and U11 combined. (Qualcomm is working to patch things up with LG by promising them access to the 845 for their L7, which will launch before the Samsung Galaxy S9.)
So it is no surprise that memory companies are going to prioritize supplying the <b>1.5 billion smartphones that will be sold this year</b> over Nintendo, who HOPES to sell 10 million Switch units in 2017 and 50 million over the 7 or so years that this console will be on the market. They can lose Nintendo's business and be fine. Losing the business of an Apple or Huawei ... not so much.
Their Switch feels cheap and underengineered according to those who've used it.
It’d be great to see a demo station of it somewhere. Unfortunately they don’t seem to be putting any out. I’m more into emulation of all the old stuff these days, though, anyway.
Unfortunately, Nintendo has a long, consistent history of creating very popular products but not being able to keep up with demand.
They'd be far better off (at least financially) if they focused 100% on software and abandoned their hardware, which they can barely manage anyway. Their Switch feels cheap and underengineered according to those who've used it.
Untrue. Sure they had two failures. But they've also had runaway successes. The switch appears to be another one.
Fortunately for nintendo, they are like the Apple of gaming, making hardware and software
they stand and to profit handsomely as the switch has to set y worry about the current PS4 pro and an yet another upcoming iteration of Xbox one.
Their Switch feels cheap and underengineered according to those who've used it.
It’d be great to see a demo station of it somewhere. Unfortunately they don’t seem to be putting any out. I’m more into emulation of all the old stuff these days, though, anyway.
I'd gladly buy well-designed iOS versions of early Nintendo games in the App Store. That this company is incapable of capitalizing on what's right in front of them is a clear indicator they are run by fools.
Their Switch feels cheap and underengineered according to those who've used it.
It’d be great to see a demo station of it somewhere. Unfortunately they don’t seem to be putting any out. I’m more into emulation of all the old stuff these days, though, anyway.
I'd gladly buy well-designed iOS versions of early Nintendo games in the App Store. That this company is incapable of capitalizing on what's right in front of them is a clear indicator they are run by fools.
Good luck playing games like MarioKart without a controller on iOS, it is an extremely lacklustre experience if it is playable at all. Nintendo knows what it is doing when it comes to their games, it's also one of the reasons they still produce their own hardware.
And the Switch being under engineered? Sure the CPU and GPU do not compare to a PS4 but that is race Nintendo isn't even in, they want the whole experience. Have you even tried the joy cons? Aside from the fact that you now have a console that actually allows for 8 player offline play (by creating wireless local networks between console) the joy cons themselves are of remarkable quality with a TON of features cramped into a tiny space.
The right sided joy con alone has:
Bluetooth NFC Infrared HDRumble HDMotion sensing
Combined they enable a wide range of amazing control options none of the other competitors offer, good luck playing a game like ARMS on an XBONE or PS4. Also: When was the last time you used your PS4 or XBONE in the bathroom, the train, a car or an airplane?
If all of that stuff is not your cup of tea then then you are free to go for alternatives, but calling the Switch cheap and under engineered, or Nintendo a bunch of fools who are incapable of running their products, is like playing arm chair CEO to Apple where you tell Tim Cook what to do.
Comments
For instance, remember when the floods hit Thailand where most HDDs are manufactured thereby severely reducing supply for the entire world? I think Apple got lucky because they had been moving heavily toward NAND, but budget PC makers were hit hard with constrained volume and at a higher price, where they already make little to no profit. If Apple was still relying on HDD and they needed all (or nearly all) the HDDs that could be produced, would it be fair for every other if Macs were the only PCs that could still be produced for a year because of contracts that included a certain volume of units for a given timeframe?
Actually I personally dealt with this situation, and customer who have long term strategic relationship with the suppliers did okay. 60% of the world supply of HDD's were offline, most it was WD, and a number of tier 2 suppliers who affected Seagate, Hitachi, and Toshiba. The HDD suppliers screwed distribution channels they did not get supply and anyone buying from distribution had issues, the Tier 1 OEM like Apple and such were all on allocations. The company I (not PCs) worked for we got supply, but none of our competitors since they either were not strategic with the HDD companies or they were buying form distribution. During this 6 month period we shipped more products with HDD then we even had in the past, we actually picked up business during this time since we have supply and our competitors did not did not. Pricing did go up, to the OEMs bit no where near what if did for distribution customers and non-strategic customers. I heard HP and Apple were okay, but Dell, Acer and such did hurt since they always buy on price and move business around solely on price.
The folks who claimed that Sony and Microsoft ripped everything off from Nintendo and Nintendo should sue them ... all right Never mind that Atari preceded the NES and Milton-Bradley preceded the Gameboy. Or that the Playstation and XBox always were ahead of Nintendo products in CPU, OS, graphics, streaming capability and storage media and still are. By contrast Nintendo still can't even manage an online store properly. Nintendo fell so far behind with their OS that they actually went to Cyanogen, asking them to make a closed down version of Android for the Switch initially, because Android was far ahead of the OS that they were using for the DS and the Wii. When Cyanogen refused - objecting to the closed source thing - Nintendo had to hire out and create a new OS from scratch, which delayed the Switch by a year. And their new OS is STILL far behind the XBox and Playstation in terms of performance and capability. Lots of third party developers have abandoned Nintendo entirely because they are unable to hobble titles that run fine on Playstation, XBox and Steam down to what it would take to run on Nintendo. And the Nintendo Switch isn't even as powerful as the Nvidia Shield Android TV set top box, which gives 4K output (the switch is only 1080p, not even 2K).
Also, comparing Nintendo to Apple just isn't fair. Apple: the biggest company in the history of the world. Nintendo: they make video game consoles and a few (aging) video game franchises. The Wii, the best selling product in Nintendo's history, sold 102 million units. And this was over the life of the console WHICH WAS SEVEN YEARS. After that, the Gameboy Advance (thanks to the Pokemon craze) which sold 81 million units way back in 2001, and the 3DS selling 66 million, and it has been on the market since 2011. The original NES sold 61 million way back in the 80s, and no other hardware of theirs reached 50 million.(SNES 49 million, N64 32 million). And oh yes, you DO NOT want to compare the average selling price and profit margin for a Nintendo gaming system to that for an iPhone, or even an Apple Watch, iPad or iPod. And that speaks nothing of the HUGE margin that Apple gets on their Macs, and I would imagine that Apple sells more Macs annually than Nintendo does consoles.
Nintendo, despite their huge global cultural impact, really is a small company in a niche industry. The percentage of households that own a PC or smartphone dwarfs the percentage that owns a gaming console, and always has.
This sounds like someone is trying to shift the blame for problems with their supply chain away from Nintendo.
Also, with supply chain as is everything else, component manufacturers respond to whoever pays them the most money. Case in point: Samsung versus LG and HTC for Qualcomm's business this year. Qualcomm only had the ability to manufacture so many Snapdragon 835 chips because it relies on a new process, meaning the machinery necessary to make them were in short supply. What did they do? Give the entire initial run of Snapdragon 835 SOCs to Samsung, forcing LG to launch the G6 with last year's Snapdragon 821 and HTC to delay their U11 flagship by 2 months. Why? Because Samsung will sell more than twice as many Galaxy S8 devices as LG and HTC will of the G6 and U11 combined. (Qualcomm is working to patch things up with LG by promising them access to the 845 for their L7, which will launch before the Samsung Galaxy S9.)
So it is no surprise that memory companies are going to prioritize supplying the <b>1.5 billion smartphones that will be sold this year</b> over Nintendo, who HOPES to sell 10 million Switch units in 2017 and 50 million over the 7 or so years that this console will be on the market. They can lose Nintendo's business and be fine. Losing the business of an Apple or Huawei ... not so much.
Fortunately for nintendo, they are like the Apple of gaming, making hardware and software
they stand and to profit handsomely as the switch has to set y worry about the current PS4 pro and an yet another upcoming iteration of Xbox one.
And the Switch being under engineered? Sure the CPU and GPU do not compare to a PS4 but that is race Nintendo isn't even in, they want the whole experience. Have you even tried the joy cons? Aside from the fact that you now have a console that actually allows for 8 player offline play (by creating wireless local networks between console) the joy cons themselves are of remarkable quality with a TON of features cramped into a tiny space.
The right sided joy con alone has:
NFC
Infrared
HDRumble
HDMotion sensing
Combined they enable a wide range of amazing control options none of the other competitors offer, good luck playing a game like ARMS on an XBONE or PS4.
Also: When was the last time you used your PS4 or XBONE in the bathroom, the train, a car or an airplane?
If all of that stuff is not your cup of tea then then you are free to go for alternatives, but calling the Switch cheap and under engineered, or Nintendo a bunch of fools who are incapable of running their products, is like playing arm chair CEO to Apple where you tell Tim Cook what to do.