Apple Expected to Consume 25% of All DRAM in 2015 | Hacker News Reader

Apple Expected to Consume 25% of All DRAM in 2015

hothardware.com

43 pointsDoubleguitars32 comments

Wait. Something doesn't make sense.

1. Apple consumes 25% of all DRAM -- more than any other vendor. That's what the article says.

2. Doesn't Samsung sell more smartphones than Apple?

The actual article says sales, so maybe they're not counting Samsung using Samsung manufactured DRAM as sales?

Yes, that doesn't make sense. For every iDevice, there are 6X other devices sold. For every Mac there are 4 PCs sold. We not even counting server and other non-phone/table/PC market here where Apple doesn't even have presence.

Maybe they're counting macbooks? Macbooks are the most popular line of laptops out there. My new one from work has 16gb of RAM.

No, actually they're nowhere near being the most popular or produced.

In Q3 last year they were third, and that's including all PC sales (including desktops). I'd say that's pretty close.

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/10/lenovo-is-top-suppl...

But still, I said they have most popular line of laptops. So, once you filter out desktops, macbooks outsells all other notebook lines from competitors. If you add all of the lines together from competitors then that might not be the case (I can't find data that granular), but of any one line, macbooks sell the most.

True, but depends on how you define the market. Also - consider tablets. Anyone have any good summary of laptop/tablet market share? It is hard to find..

There's more. The article expects Apple's share to rise by 70% (from 15 to 25%). But Apple's market share for phones and tablets has been declining for several years, why would that turn around now?

Short answer: more Android devices are sold than iOS devices, but the iPhone is the single best selling smartphone in almost every market. For example, Apple outsells Samsung in the U.S., though you wouldn't know it from the media coverage.

Samsung actually missed their numbers the previous quarter; they admit that 2014 will be "a challenge" for them: http://www.theverge.com/2014/7/30/5953603/samsung-sales-and-...

Apple sold about 79 million iPhones the past two quarters (Apple sales data is at http://images.apple.com/pr/pdf/q3fy14datasum.pdf).

Apple announced on September 22 they sold 10 million iPhone 6 and 6 Plus devices the first weekend they were available: http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2014/09/22First-Weekend-iPho...

The 6 and 6 Plus go on sale in China on all three carriers on October 17th, where there have been 4 million pre-orders: https://gigaom.com/2014/10/03/china-iphone-6-reservations-re...

All of this before new iPads, which are expected on October 16 and the holiday buying season.

In the previous holiday quarter, Apple sold 51 million iPhones (http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2014/01/27Apple-Reports-Firs... there's a good chance they'll sell more this time around.

Apple is likely to sell many Apple Watches next year, so it's not that hard to see why they'll consume 25% of all LPDRAM.

No, you are absolutely wrong and I'm not even sure how the links you provided backs up your claims. Android has been outselling iOS way back - since 2013 - and the gap only had been widening every quarter. For world, iOS has pathetic 15% share, Android with 80% for 2014 shipments.

http://techland.time.com/2013/04/16/ios-vs-android/

We all know the global marketshare numbers; they are not in dispute here.

The question was: does Samsung sell more smartphones than Apple. The answer is no; Apple sells more smartphones than Samsung does. In fact, Samsung has lost marketshare to low-cost manufactures like Huawei.

Further, Apple sells more smartphones than either HTC or Motorola.

What Apple doesn't do is sell more smartphones than Samsung, Motorola, HTC and the rest of Android manufacturers combined, which is what I posted to begin with.

So my point still stands: Apple by itself sells enough iOS devices (and some Macs) to justify requiring 25% of the LPDRAM supply.

Perhaps the article sloppily meant 25% of all DDR3? The only way this adds up is if you assume a radical contraction of the DDR3 market (Intel currently markets a server processor using DDR4). But that seems like quite a stretch.

Maybe the Mac and iPod businesses more than makes up for the difference? I don't know how Samsung's other DRAM-consuming businesses compare.

Also, I may be wrong but I believe iphones have only 1gb of RAM vs 2gb for most android phones?

A very tiny number of high end android phones have 2gb. Most android phones are very low end devices. There is a good section in this overview that shows that many android devices have less than the 512M that google recommends:

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2014/10/02/what-every-app-de...

every high end device (comparable to the iPhone) released from about last month onward has at least 2 GB of ram

the Nexus 5 (350$ outright) has 2 GB of ram

in the USA, you could probably get a subsidized phone (for free) that has 2 GB of ram from any of the top 4 carriers. (See: Galaxy S4)

---

i just checked ATT, T-Mobile, Verizon[1], and Sprint all offer the S4 for 0$ up front cost (it has 2GB of ram)

[1] Verizon charges 50$ up front (plus all the same BS fees you'd get on an iPhone).

>every high end device (comparable to the iPhone) released from about last month onward has at least 2 GB of ram

Which doesn't contradict what he said at all.

Every high end device from last year has 2GB of RAM, this year's top end devices have 3GB. Actually, last year's Note 3 had 3GB of RAM.

I'm a little surprised by that too.. Nexus 4 had 2gb; only the Moto G ($180 unlocked) has 1gb now..

At first, this dissuaded me from buying the Moto G. I had a Moto Droid 4 before (also 1GB memory) and feared it wouldn't be much of an upgrade. Haven't had a lot of trouble with the Moto G though, everything runs super-smooth, and no force closing apps.

If I don't restart mine for extended periods of time it starts slowing down noticeably, and I don't use many apps at all. Makes me consider getting a Moto X (the old one) instead.

i don't follow your logic. apple sells a lot more than just phones.

Sure, but at the same time, other company sell more than apple in every market apple is in. Apple is like a small drop in the ocean of other manufacturers.

Actually, the iPhone is the single best selling smartphone in the world.

Q1: 51 million Q2: 43.7 Q3: 35.2

That's 129 million (and some change) iPhones. And that's before ending Q4 (we'll get the results later this month) with selling 10 million iPhone 6 and 6 Plus devices in 72 hours: http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2014/09/22First-Weekend-iPho...

Sure, more Android devices are sold by dozens of different companies, but no single Android device outsells the iPhone. Not the Galaxy S5, the HTC One, the Moto X.

This article, which may be the original source, makes it clear that we're talking LPDDR3 (aka "mobile DRAM") only.

http://press.trendforce.com/node/view/1658.html

Interesting, still I don't see how other manufacturers sell less as they sell more phones.

They won't: "Macbook Pro, which will be equipped with LPDDR3 DRAM for the first time. "

"Mobile DRAM" isn't just LPDDR3. Many cheaper phones use LPDDR2 or something else and Qualcomm's new high end chips slated for Q1 2015 support LPDDR4 memory.

Although it makes sense if this about LPDDR3, as I think every current iDevice except the 5C and iPod use that, whereas only higher end Androids and Windows Phones use it. MacBooks are also considerably more popular relatively in the higher end regions of the market. That skews the figure considerably towards Apple. Especially considering other platforms will start moving to LPDDR4 soon.

That clarifies a lot of our questions! 25% of the mobile market (weighted by RAM) makes much more sense..

These numbers seem way off. Even if Apple doubled the sales of everything they make it would be 25% of the entire market for everything that uses DRAM. Servers. Desktop PCs. Embedded systems, etc.

Looks like they're talking about LPDDR3 ram... which is typically used in mobiles. But, apple also uses them in laptops, and they sell a shitload of laptops with 8 or 16gb.

This is where having a supply chain guy like Tim Cook is a big boon. At 25% of the market, I'm sure there are both big opportunities to leverage your position, as well as big hazards in either managing lots of contracts, or in dealing with perhaps a small number of suppliers capable of those sorts of yields.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com