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Comment by schraeds | Hacker News Reader

Crucial as in $100 of silicon enables a $30,000 dollar sale for auto instead of $3,000 for a computer

And yet, the majority of the auto industry decided they should cancel their chip orders as soon as the pandemic hit because it might be an economic downturn.

Apple alone spends more money on semiconductors than the ENTIRE auto industry. They played stupid games and won stupid prizes with this chip shortage.

Their margins are much tighter than Apple’s. This outcome is far better than having a ton of unsold stock depreciating in dealer yards. That quickly leads to bankruptcy as it did in ‘08.

Limiting their downside risk was the right call given the information.

So now the auto manufacturers know they don't need to worry the next time it looks like there will be a downturn. They can cancel orders and if they turn out to be wrong just get on the phone to their favourite politician.

Maybe more like: next time there’s a downturn, keep the orders if they can afford to. Having the chips on hand when the market picks up again could be a great investment, since they’ll be able to produce vehicles when their competitors can’t. Or they can sell some of the chips they’re holding to their competitors (at the going market rate).

and then what? TSMC falls over itself because oh no, Merkel sent a letter, full focus on automotive chips? I doubt that has very much influence in how production is balanced.

But which provides more value to the economy over time? That such a large percentage of the economy was able to stop driving and work from home does say a lot about the value of computers today.

The iPad Pro with the trackpad keyboard is indeed more of a content consumption device than the typical office PC, but it's also more of a work creation device than the typical office PC, particularly if its user ever has to do work from a different chair.

> But which provides more value to the economy over time?

Probably the thing that's not another iPad (e.g. the luxury content consumption device).

A) iPad costs 350$, it's not luxury by any means

B) iPad can be used for work, studying and much more, not only consumption

But they are selling >10x the amount of phones, which are largely supporting a more important supply chain.

Phones are only really relevant for one of those countries, and even there the actual manufacturing is outsourced to Asia.

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