[zozbot234]

It's not really a blunder though. Given that total capacity is tightly constrained, Samsung and SK Hynix are happy to focus on what they do at their best and with the highest margins. Why shouldn't they supply the HBM market?

[m4rtink]

Maybe not to starve whole segments of the society and economy of critical inputs ?

This is why we have strategy reserves - to avoid greedy companies to make a quick buck when they find out they can sell the equivalent of crack and dump all the other now low margin stuff like food or other essentials.

Sure, that company might make a killing for a short while, but people will die from hunger, missing medicine or freeze to death.

[zozbot234]

So let's buy a strategic reserve of DIMM sticks from CXMT. But that's not a great strategy either, because RAM tech evolves. DDR3 to DDR4 to DDR5 to DDR6. So you need to rotate your strategic reserves over time, and luckily enough for you, the used goods market is doing exactly that for free!

[overfeed]

It's putting all eggs in one basket. If/when the higher-margin category collapses, they'll have no fallback. Imagine Chevrolet had discontinued Impalas and other low-margin cars, and switched to Corvettes during the pandemic

[zozbot234]

Even if there's a collapse in the high-margin market (I don't think anyone is expecting this right now), it will be slow and telegraphed in advance, giving them plenty of time to refocus on lower-margin products.

[CamperBob2]

Good description of what actually happened. Do they even sell any conventional 2-door passenger cars besides the Corvette these days?