I love these cats. Price transparency and efficiency in this market is waaay overdue. I would have never have guessed that chip prices rise over time. Seems like on the very lowest level of chip complexity, Moore's law doesnt apply.
I'd guess that the markets for chips would be driven by similar dynamics as other commodities, such as oil.
Maybe the next step will be real-time feeds for chip prices, and after that people will start trading chip futures on Wall Street?
Apple gets really good prices on their components even though they generate huge demand because the parts manufacturers know they'll be able to sell millions of whatever the part is, so they can afford to sell it with less margin for themselves per unit. This isn't true of smaller volume chips where the manufacturer has to price some amount of lost opportunity cost into a relatively small market item.
Following Moore's law tends to optimize $/transistor and low power consumption for high transistor count devices.