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Well I suppose this is one way to crush the competition

Didn't they also do that with the small hard drives when they introduced the original iPod?

There were 200 competitors in the MP3 player market to go out of business?

tommy boy, manufacturers, not brands. Lots of different companies in Asia make Apple's stuff too.

Darwinism at work.

Nice to see the best product winning for a change. And you gotta love having economy of scale finally on our side.

Jack A -

economies of scale are and have always been "on our side".

You are on the "consumer" side aren't you?

MDN word: ever

Well I suppose this is one way to crush the competition

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Reminds me of Andrew Carnegie...

Calling the other manufacturers "competitors" is a bit generous, to say the least!

The competitors going out of business IS NOT from lack of flash memory, its from not having a decent product to sell.

I don't know -- that was pretty lame of Apple. I don't think it's their responsibility, but if Microsoft had done this, these boards would be screaming foul play.

RomeoDawg, How is Apple, (a hardware company) lame for buying a huge volume of flash to meet sales/ demand for a new product?

MS is a software company that dabbles in gaming hardware. IF they were to buy a huge amount of a component to meet demand for the XBox, how would that be lame?

iPod sales (HD & Flash) account for what, 70% of all sales? They purchashed only 40% of the inventory from ONE supplier of flash. How is anybody hurt? Except maybe Apple, who probably didn't buy enough memory to meet the demand for their product?

I to have to dissagree with comments suggesting Apple has done something wrong, or M$ like.

I have to agree with Darknite that the issue is that Apple has simply out innovated the "competition". Remember, none of them wanted these new smaller flash drives until Apple released the Nano.

Apple has rightly contracted for the parts in the numbers it needs. It was able to do that because, according to Samsung, no else has yet placed an order.

CEO of Samsung's semiconductor dividion Wang is quoted as saying “Eventually, the MLC and 4GB type will be provided to any company that wants it, but currently Apple seems to be the only one.”

http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200509/200509280023.html

MDN: "First"

First, the 200 Chinese OEMS going out of business were from one Taiwanese article.

Second, there's a Samsung spokesman who says the NAND flash Apple is using is NEW, and not based upon the same tech in the old NAND flash that other suppliers are using. Interestingly the new NAND flash is 30% cheaper to make, so the discount isn't just because Apple bought the most, it bought a supply of new NAND that costs less to manufacture.