The iPhone 8 isn’t coming for at least a few more months, but the device is already hurting the competition in at least one critical area, new reports claim.
Apple’s competitors are fighting to get enough memory supply for the remainder of the year, Reuters reports, with the iPhone being the main consumer of such components.
Some smartphone makers are willing to pay more money for NAND chips used for storage, as well as DRAM chips, and they’re willing to sign longer contracts with suppliers. That’s just to ensure they’ll have enough memory for their future devices. Those costs may be passed down to the buyer in the future.
The expected memory chips shortages caused in part by Apple’s aggressive memory buying practices may have other side effects. Rivals may choose not to upgrade the RAM or storage on upcoming devices or offer products of lower quality.
Reuters explains that memory technologies are evolving in complexity, which is one other-other reason why supply is limited. Apple’s huge demand, however, is seen as one of the main reason why competing smartphone makers are bulking up on RAM and storage chips in advanced.
“The problem will be more acute for the NAND market, where the iPhone remains a critical source of demand given the huge sales volumes and recent moves to increase storage capacity on the device,” chip suppliers said. It’s unclear how much storage the iPhone 8 and iPhone 7s will ship with. Only last year, Apple doubled storage across the board for the iPhone 7 series, with storage going all the way up to 256GB. The latest iPad Pros ship with up to 512GB of storage.