[wtallis]

By that I meant that it was largely Apple that proved that it was a good idea for Samsung to expand their flash production capabilities, and Apple also had a significant effect to drive their competitors to start buying flash in such large quantities. I don't think there's enough publicly available information to determine whether Samsung's profits off Apple were enough to directly finance a whole fab, but when one company starts buying half your production capacity of a commodity item, that's a good sign that expanding your capacity will soon be worth every penny invested.