2019 will see DRAM oversupply say industry sources

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Again, if a company reads current market forces and trends and sets it's prices to mximise returns, that isn't price-fixing. If it colludes with others that they all do the same, it is.

The price rise being unusual, or huge, isn't proof of ptice fixing, especially if some unusual external factor say, huge demand from BC miners (for which there is no historical precedent) causes an unusual demand pattern.

Crypto is probably not as big a reason as people think,as this is the 2ND crypto rush and cards jumped massively in price back then during the first one a few years ago.

Last time I checked there wasn't a massive 2 to 3 times jump in RAM prices then - plus graphics card used the same RAM now as back then,ie,GDDR5,and lower end ones used DDR3 even to cut costs.

AMD also over-produced cards MASSIVELY meaning they got screwed over as they had to ditch a lot of them.

IF cryptomining was a reason we would have seen huge DDR3 price increases,that regulators would have gotten involved back then like now.

In fact the last time DDR3 went up in price by like 50% or a bit more was when RAM companies cut production since they thought pricing was too low and that was because they thought there was too much of it IIRC.

Taking advantage of high denand is not price-fixing. Nor is limiting or even reducing production to raise prices because doing so opens the door to competitors to jump in a seize market share by doing so.

If the competitors ALL adopt that same strategy, independently, it still isn't price-fixing.

It's a basic economic law that high demand and limited supply causes prices to rise until either demand dtops off of supply increases .... perhaps by a new entrant.

The basic definition of an oligopolist is a player with a large enough market share to influence market conditions without being able to, unlike a monopoly, dictate them. That's why there are "antitrust" laws.

Being large enough to influence price by your actions and seeking to maximise profit isn't price-fixing, nor is actually doing so. Colluding with others to do so is, bar those exceptions I mentiond.

Samsung has been caught doing it for other computing things too and they have a history of doing it:

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/0...screen_cartel/
https://www.cnet.com/news/samsung-lg...-price-fixing/
https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001...07682854719686
http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-10-1685_en.htm
https://www.computerworld.com/articl...ce-fixing.html

All found out by price rises which artificially stayed high and fined lots of money. Samsung price fixed CRTs for a decade. So that is 3/3 for Samsung,ie,price-fixing DRAM,CRTs and LCDs. Sure,they "might" not be doing it this time!

BTW,Samsung ratted out some of its co-conspirators in one of the cases too! You might get some money back(IIRC) if you bought a CRT affected in that period.

But just to re-iterate,OFC it does not mean they have priced fixed,even if they have been caught doing it loads of times before by regulators all over the world.


Hopefully Tony Blair does not read this thread!! We can definitely trust Tony,right??

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

A side note.


Its also basic technology history that many tech companies THINK they can bump up the price more and more and get away with it since they THINK they have a captive audience like in a communist country,and that the "free market" only goes their way. Except that does not happen as the market does respond,and many then end up paying for it.

You need to ask yourself a question - why do new entrants enter a market?? Hmm?? You need to also ask the question why do new entrants "get given a chance" by consumers or companies?? New equals more risk and companies and consumers don't tend to like risk.

That is because the old companies usually take the mickey through lack of innovation thinking they can sell the same stuff again and again,or overcharging meaning its financially viable for someone to come in. Saw what happened to Kodak,Nokia,etc. Too big to fail comes to mind.

Its all about cost and innovation at the end - cost rules and it will always rule. It does not matter how old a company is,or how good their product is if they charge way beyond what the market thinks is acceptable,they open themselves to be out of the market.

So what a company thinks is acceptable and what a customer thinks is acceptable is two entirely different things.

Successful longterm businesses know how to be able to leverage a price which works on both fronts.

The internet might think the pricing is acceptable,but apparently China,people in the US and plenty of others had enough and are flexing their muscles to do something about it. Too many commentors think "the free market" only goes one way and the customers can't push back. Like I said the RAM companies pushed too far this time,and there is a reaction back. If they had pushed less,none of this litigation or investigation would be happening as other companies have managed to navigate these things without issue.

Companies can ride all the free market they want - in the end the customers will always have the final say,which I feel increasingly modern consumers forget. They think they are beholden to many companies - no they are not.

Sadly China has entrapped at least one of the companies - did people honestly think that free market is a thing when you have national players involved??

Micron are the smaller of the three DRAM companies,and China asked them to drop prices. They didn't and now look what has happened,as they took some litigation Micron might have a case for and threw it back in their face via counter litigation and banned them for a short period:

https://www.techspot.com/news/75357-...hip-sales.html

So people say the free market means they "can charge what they want" - except China are using their leverage as a massive customer to force prices down. Even Apple does that.

Plus do people seriously think if China does not get what it wants on price reductions in DRAM,they won't find a way to fine the companies or try some other tactic?? Emm,really??

China is not looking at this as a simple "business interest" but as a "national one". The excessive RAM prices are affecting the ability of their own companies to compete,ie,employ people(think why that is important in China).

They asked the companies to reduce prices - hubris meant they didn't and they actually increased them further. They think the triad of RAM companies is NOW affecting their national interest and if unchecked will cause more issues. Think what they are going to do in the short term - do everything to force prices down.

Think in the longterm what they will do. This is why I said the companies deserve a special life achievement Darwin award.

Likewise the US is going that way too - any country or any company which gets in the way of the national interests of US or China,really needs to be wary. The US wants to stay top dog and China wants to be top dog.

It will be interesting to see how this works out over the next 5 to 10 years.

[aidanjt]

Each company, utterly independently, can make that decision and it isn't price fixing.

Arguably it is, if there's a wink and a nod involved. It's not very probable that none of them would naturally respond to a surge in demand for DRAM and allow its price to explode so dramatically. Being implicit/sneakier about their actions doesn't make them any more innocent about what their intent is, and end result of their actions. They don't really need a formal conspiracy to fix prices, all they need to do is indirectly signal intended market decisions by shareholder meetings and press releases, and if they all fall lock step, then they can sit back as the green rolls in. And I'm not ruling out a formal conspiracy either.

[Saracen]

Arguably it is, if there's a wink and a nod involved. It's not very probable that none of them would naturally respond to a surge in demand for DRAM and allow its price to explode so dramatically. Being implicit/sneakier about their actions doesn't make them any more innocent about what their intent is, and end result of their actions. They don't really need a formal conspiracy to fix prices, all they need to do is indirectly signal intended market decisions by shareholder meetings and press releases, and if they all fall lock step, then they can sit back as the green rolls in. And I'm not ruling out a formal conspiracy either.

But even with a wink and a nod, it's not independent.

What I keep pointing out is that high prices do not ONLY arise from collusion and price fixing.

Suppose you and I are the only suppliers of widgets, and demand is huge. People love eidgets.

Now, absolutely without any reference to you, I double my price. In a highly competitive market, I lose massive market share but as there's only two of us, that leaves you with a choice - follow suit, and seriously improve both your margins and profits, without any extra production .... or, massively increase production to go for market share.

However .... if you increase production, and bear in mind you can't do it overnight, you run the risk that once you've done so, I cut prices again lwavi g you overstocked. I might even use some of my previous huge margins to undercut you, leaving you with high stock and even smaller margins.

You can similarly game it out with three, or several players, though it gets considerably more complex. And don't forget to factor in price-elasticity of demand.

The point, again, is that while price-fixing is one way to get high prices, it's far from the only way. What's happened here, we simply don't know. Yet.

[kompukare]

However .... if you increase production, and bear in mind you can't do it overnight, you run the risk that once you've done so, I cut prices again lwavi g you overstocked.

As I speculated, only Samsung might have had capacity to 'spare' but having looked into that a bit more it takes at least 6 months to switch from flash to DRAM (and with flash prices also very high it may not be an easy decision).
https://epsnews.com/2017/09/13/drams-price-war-looming/

However, buyers shouldn’t expect a big change in prices and inventory in the short term.

“Even if Micron and Samsung decide today that they are going to add DRAM capacity, it won't significantly impact supplies and pricing until next year,” said Brian Matas, vice president, IC Insights. “I don't think either company has idle capacity just waiting to be turned on to make DRAM.”

Matas also noted that if either company wanted to switch their NAND flash capacity to DRAM capacity, the process takes about six months to complete. “It is rather complicated and involved to switch from making one product to the other. The companies would have to be pretty sure that's what they wanted to do.”

A lot of big buyers of course consider memory to be pure commodity stuff whose producers often make huge losses, but of course neither side cares too much if it hurts the other side's business (still from that EPS News article):

Memory buyers are always on a rollercoaster ride when it comes to supply and demand. One of the key challenges they face is navigating price negotiations during undersupply and oversupply cycles.

When there is an oversupply, buyers have the upper hand and can negotiate for the best possible price, but sometimes they do it at the risk of hurting their suppliers. Industry players say this isn’t a good strategy when trying to develop long-term supply relationships.

But when it happens, suppliers don’t forget, and those buyers will hurt when there is an undersupply of inventory.

“Just one year ago, DRAM buyers took full advantage of the oversupply (excess capacity) portion of the cycle and negotiated the lowest price possible with the DRAM manufacturers, regardless of whether the DRAM suppliers lost money on the deal,” said Matas. “Now, with tight capacity in the market, DRAM suppliers are getting their ‘payback’ and charging whatever the market will bear, regardless of whether the price increases hurt the users’ electronic system sales or causes it to lose money.”

The speculation in that article is that it will be Hynix who are going to add capacity and that eventually the others will follow. Although Micron have stated that they have to plans to build more fabs and another article speculates that due them having far worse margins than Samsung. So Samsung may see that as an opportunity to gain at Micron's expense. From https://www.electronicsweekly.com/bl...acity-2017-10/

Well, first, Samsung could be worried about letting Micron make too much money. Samsung’s DRAM operating margin is 59%, Micron’s is 44%. By raising production and ending shortages Samsung will generate price cuts which will hurt its less profitable US rival more than it hurts Samsung.

Also a price drop may reduce Micron’s appetite for adding substantially more capacity itself. Flushed with the cash from over-heated pricing, Micron is said to be contemplating building more fabs.

Second, a drop in prices will raise the cost of entry for the Chinese. Huge China DRAM fabs are expected to come on-stream next year and bombing prices will guarantee a profitless market entry for the Chinese.

Samsung may see both hurting Micron and the new Chinese upstarts as worth it in the longer term.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I kind of find it really funny how people are defending the price rises as understandable to justify it.

However,if you look at some companies like Intel - people are just castigating them for their business practices despite spending $10s of billions on new fabs and various failed initiatives.

Also,the "they make losses" - lots of businesses make losses. They should know as a business to be able to negotiate a fair price and if they can't and do that with the continual price swings,they only have themselves to blame and consumers shouldn't need to care. Companies like Samsung are hardly tiny and have links with the South Korean government.

Look at the massive critcisims of Maplins,etc when they went bankrupt on this forum - people said they should have run their business better and they at least employed UK workers.

Its like with AMD - it was a shame when they made losses,but that has ZERO impact on how a consumer cares about the quality of their product or the pricing.

AMD has made tons of losses over its last 25 years and they still have margins half that of Intel - will a single person defend AMD for very poor pricing. Nope. Look at Vega once the subsidies were cut.

AMD probably "needs" the money more than Intel or Nvidia,but everyone is buying Rzyen based on price/performance not the best margins for AMD.

You can't criticise pricing for one set of companies and then rail out in defence of poor pricing for others since it seems a bit weird TBH.

Also,LMAO at the analysts saying Samsung will "hurt" the Chinese startup - you mean a national initiative backed by the second largest economy in the world.

If the startups were done on a purely financial basis,they won't be viable initially since they are entering a market with three well known companies.

Remember,China dumping steel at below cost - do you think China won't do the same for NAND too?

Chinese phone companies like Huawei,etc have raced into the top5 of phone companies in terms of volume by having very narrow margins,and many here didn't believe me when I said Chinese phone companies would start to take the market,due to incumbants overpricing stuff and not pushing enough innovation,and China willing to give up short term profits for longterm gains.

Chinese companies are less influenced by shareholders and more by what the Chinese state wants,which is longterm stability.

Most of these Chinese companies are vehicles of the Chinese government/allowed by the government to keep employment high.

The RAM companies can get away with pushing pricing up higher in past situations since they were taking on consumers and other companies. Any price fixing investigations happened when someone leaks stuff,or companies/consumers complain. It then
takes years for any sort of investigation to happen,and they can lawyer up and contest any fines. Intel has not even paid its EU fines for price manipulation yet.

Except in the case of China,they react much quicker and will use sideways methods to get what they want.

[Corky34]

Also, re the lawsuit, that's clear evidence someone thinks they can establish collusion, but it isn't evidence of collusion until the case is decided.

True but until a court decides one way or the other it's all what someone thinks, me, you, the lawyers.

It's doubtful there will ever be a smoking gun such as a leaked email saying "hey guys let's collude to push prices up" so in the end it's a judgment call and having skimmed through the PDF of their submission their case is rather compelling, I've not read the defenses submission, and I'm not a businessman or investor, so there could be good reasons why a company would say they expect demand to rise by 25% but their only going to increase supply by 15% and that their main priority is not taking market share from their competitors and a few weeks later one of their competitors saying their going to do roughly the same thing.

It's also not the first time. History gives us an example. BUT .... that it was done before isn't evidence of current guilt any more than accusations are.

Completely and i wasn't trying to imply they're guilty because they did it in the past or that i was jumping on a bandwagon saying their guilty because someones made accusations, it's obviously just my personal opinion and that counts for diddly-squat, having said that if i had to make a judgment based only on the evidence submitted by the plaintiffs I'd personally say their guilty, i guess only time will tell if I'm wrong.

Like i said there's probably very good reason to say "our focus is not on market share.", "that they would keep total wafer capacity flat", they would only "grow DRAM supply between 15-20% in 2017, even as DRAM demand grew 20-25%", "refrain from taking each other’s market share", "our focus is not to increase our market share but to maximize our profits", but if there are good reasons I'm not seeing them.

Now, absolutely without any reference to you, I double my price. In a highly competitive market, I lose massive market share but as there's only two of us, that leaves you with a choice - follow suit, and seriously improve both your margins and profits, without any extra production .... or, massively increase production to go for market share.

I think i understand why you've simplified the model but that's not really how it works, in your example your competitor would probably do a little of both, they'd increase prices and invest in future production at the same time, in essence they'd undercut your future price and production capability.

[kompukare]

Understanding the reasons does not meant defending them, as I said in my first post:

As for consumers, well I guess I'll just not buy at this price while my current stuff is fine.

Prices will eventually drop again, in the meantime both my desktop and laptop each have 16GB of DDR3. If I was buying now, I'd probably get as little as I can get away with (16GB). But that surely hurts all the other hardware companies as I'd probably consider an 8 core Ryzen and it seems silly to have only 16GB on that. So I'll probably put that whole purchase off. So no sales for the mobo makers, AMD, plus I'd probably have bought some NVMe drive too and possible a graphic card.

So not good for the whole tech industry, but none of that means I cannot see why the remaining* DRAM are so keen to not kill their golden goose and are happy raking it in atm.

*And the fact that there are really only three remaining should tell us something about the viability of the business. Very, very high capex, fabs whose lead time is 2+years, and often major losses. Even at the current vastly inflated Samsung's current (well they were current for in 2017) profits are far lower than the likes of Nvidia (64.48%), Intel (60.57%) or Qualcomm (55.51%). And these are gross figures from which both Samsung and Intel have to still build their fabs etc. and Samsung is on a building spree


Actually, those margins vs previous years aren't that much bigger. Makes we wonder if some middlemen aren't raking it in too and like with mining only the chip manufacturer is getting the whole blame?

As for the new Chinese players, while the Chinese government does have huge pockets (although China is now one of the most indebted countries in the world) it isn't actually that easy to break into the market in terms of leading edge tech. And while there is a market for slower, older and more power hungry parts I doubt that stuff will be any good for enthusiast for a long while. There is a very good reason why those Samsung B-dies go for a premium, and even in the OEM market a 2-4 cheap chips vs 1 more expensive chip might not even be a consideration in mobile, phones and other markets.

[kompukare]

Like i said there's probably very good reason to say "our focus is not on market share.", "that they would keep total wafer capacity flat", they would
only "grow DRAM supply between 15-20% in 2017, even as DRAM demand grew 20-25%", "refrain from taking each other’s market share", "our focus is not to increase our market share but to maximize our profits", but if there are good reasons I'm not seeing them.

To say there are some additional good reason, but that doesn't necessarily mean to do. As in tipping your hands to your competitors. Or even setting expectation of price decreases. Although the $billions required to build fabs is kind of hard to hide.

I've heard that the Samsung fabs are dual purpose DRAM/NAND so I assume the Hynix and Micron ones are the same. IF they weren't then, in theory Samsung could, for example, announce NAND capex and once build say sorry we're going to make DRAM here ATM because it's more profitable but of course if all three's fabs are dual purpose that would make less sense.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Understanding the reasons does not meant defending them, as I said in my first post:

Prices will eventually drop again, in the meantime both my desktop and laptop each have 16GB of DDR3. If I was buying now, I'd probably get as little as I can get away with (16GB). But that surely hurts all the other hardware companies as I'd probably consider an 8 core Ryzen and it seems silly to have only 16GB on that. So I'll probably put that whole purchase off. So no sales for the mobo makers, AMD, plus I'd probably have bought some NVMe drive too and possible a graphic card.

So not good for the whole tech industry, but none of that means I cannot see why the remaining* DRAM are so keen to not kill their golden goose and are happy raking it in atm.

*And the fact that there are really only three remaining should tell us something about the viability of the business. Very, very high capex, fabs whose lead time is 2+years, and often major losses. Even at the current vastly inflated Samsung's current (well they were current for in 2017) profits are far lower than the likes of Nvidia (64.48%), Intel (60.57%) or Qualcomm (55.51%). And these are gross figures from which both Samsung and Intel have to still build their fabs etc. and Samsung is on a building spree


Actually, those margins vs previous years aren't that much bigger. Makes we wonder if some middlemen aren't raking it in too and like with mining only the chip manufacturer is getting the whole blame?

As for the new Chinese players, while the Chinese government does have huge pockets (although China is now one of the most indebted countries in the world) it isn't actually that easy to break into the market in terms of leading edge tech. And while there is a market for slower, older and more power hungry parts I doubt that stuff will be any good for enthusiast for a long while. There is a very good reason why those Samsung B-dies go for a premium, and even in the OEM market a 2-4 cheap chips vs 1 more expensive chip might not even be a consideration in mobile, phones and other markets.

Despite,all that it comes across as a defence to a degree - they are "justified" in doing what they are doing,even if you are not meaning it!

I "get" people say they have boom and bust periods,need to spend on R and D or all the "free market" stuff,but they are not companies in a vaccuum - every company experiences these things.

People criticised others elsewhere for making excuses for Intel maximising their money making and saying competition is bad,since it reduces their income and reduces innovation,since it means reduced R and D spend. Lets go with that line of thought then. Intel has spent $10s of billions on fabs and failed intiatives too which need to be covered via free cash or loans. They have 100000 people,and probably lots of other businesses which make losses,the need to have funds for future R and D,debt repayments and for other having longterm investments in the company.

Then you have companies investing in Intel since they are a stable stock so are expected to keep that stability going and the expectation from the funds to give out dividends.If you look at it that way,they are justified in what they do,but I think many of us agree we don't give a fig about that TBH.

Now you talk about RAM companies - look in the X86 and PC graphics spaces.

Essentially ONLY Intel and AMD.

How many X86 and PC graphics companies were there 20 to 25 years ago??

Look at how many failed and talk about the viability of the PC desktop space as its shrinking and nodes are more expensive now(Nvidia conveniently had a leaked document saying that a few years ago). Hence why many were defending Nvidia quietly segregating stuff more,and charging more for certain sized chips. Look how that ended.

Look at the last 30 years of AMD profits and margins. AMD has cycles of boom and bust,and many years of marginal profits.

How many people will justify AMD putting up pricing when they were having tiny margins or making losses??

Nobody - look at Vega. Even now apparently at its current non-subsidised pricing its a loss maker at current pricing and people are not willing to pay a profitable price for it.

Even when AMD/ATI had good stuff,people expected discounting and they always had to do a price/performance thing which has not been great for them,but good for people like me or you.

It sucks but ultimately its AMD's fault a lot of times - they needed to market better,counter aggressive marketing better and plonk out better products. At times its been down to dodgy business practices by competitors.

Even with Ryzen AMD margins are under 40% and they are clearly not selling it for as much as they could.

Why?? AMD knew if they didn't undercut Intel ENOUGH,people would still buy Intel.

Looking at the AMD margins and profits for the last few decades,it would have made more sense for them to undercut Intel a bit less aggressively,and make lots more money to prepare for when Intel launches their next CPU uarch.

Intel will respond strongly since they cannot afford not to.

So in light of that,the RAM companies don't get my sympathy that much.

We should be demanding to pay more for many things then at that rate - but people are more worried about their income and how it fits into all of that.

Makes we wonder if some middlemen aren't raking it in too and like with mining only the chip manufacturer is getting the whole blame?

I said that before - the RAM price increases are huge,but the price increases for us are even bigger. EVERYONE along the chain is probably adding to it,but the RAM makers created the excuse in the first place.

As for the new Chinese players, while the Chinese government does have huge pockets (although China is now one of the most indebted countries in the world) it isn't actually that easy to break into the market in terms of leading edge tech. And while there is a market for slower, older and more power hungry parts I doubt that stuff will be any good for enthusiast for a long while. There is a very good reason why those Samsung B-dies go for a premium, and even in the OEM market a 2-4 cheap chips vs 1 more expensive chip might not even be a consideration in mobile, phones and other markets.

Leading edge stuff for enthusiasts is also a pipe dream for many PC owners when even 2666MHZ to 3000MHZ DDR4 which is hardly leading edge,costs silly money.

I suspect a lot of normal PC builders just use the cheapest stuff they can get away with TBH.

Chinese debt is also actually a much smaller percentage of GDP than most countries:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o..._external_debt

Debt is only 14% of GDP and they have the largest currency reserves in the world:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...hange_reserves

China does not NEED cutting edge - neither does most of the market. Look at a channel like Techmoan just at audiovisual stuff. Its not the best tech,but the cheapest tech which wins 9/10.

Most mass produced consumer devices don't use cutting edge RAM - even Apple used LPDDR3 for years as it was cheaper than LPDDR4.

Cutting edge RAM is RAM companies trying to push a better product for a premium and it wouldn't surprise me B-die is artificially limited in production to jack up prices.

China's main focus is displacing foreign companies from their own supply chains.

The RAM triad jacking up prices(for whatever reasons,so lets assume no price fixing) only means China will push more aggressively since it makes it more viable to do so. If they dropped prices a small bit or stopped increasing it further after China talked to them,it might have further delayed the Chinese competitors.

All I see is that they will push more aggressively now as they can use it as an excuse.

Look at a lot of the Chinese financial intiatives and tech ones - its about self suffiency and to blunt western abilities to block export of their tech or to sanction China using technological sanctions.Things like the petro-Yuan and things like CIPs are further examples of this. People will ignore them due to size NOW,but look back in 10 years.

Xi Jinping made a certain famous speech - people need to watch it.

Anyway,I personally think I will need to agree to disagree with some of you.

I will be dreaming of RAM at this rate!!

[aidanjt]

Yup, I'd actually be quite happy with China handling the base load of the 'boring' RAM, and the incumbents can battle it out for the cutting edge DRAM market. That would help tremendously. Although strategically it's not ideal, giving China that much leverage over global technology.

[peterb]

I will be dreaming of RAM at this rate!!

So that's what DRAM stands for - Dreaming RAM

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Yup, I'd actually be quite happy with China handling the base load of the 'boring' RAM, and the incumbents can battle it out for the cutting edge DRAM market. That would help tremendously. Although strategically it's not ideal, giving China that much leverage over global technology.

Yeah,a bit of worry too.

So that's what DRAM stands for - Dreaming RAM

Due to the current market,dreaming is the closest I have gotten to actually owning some!!

Also,putting that term into Google images,gives:





I think Google needs to refine its algorithms,unless they are trying to tell us something.

Carrot dreaming sheep taking over the world.,so humans need to disguise them self as RAMs,and ride the wastelands in a truck(which costs only $238/month)??

[Corky34]

To say there are some additional good reason, but that doesn't necessarily mean to do. As in tipping your hands to your competitors. Or even setting expectation of price decreases. Although the $billions required to build fabs is kind of hard to hide.

True but i thought quoting the entire submission to the court would've been rather annoying, in it they explain that what the companies said in their statements to investors and stuff was backed up by actions, besides isn't intentionally misleading investors also considered ever so slightly illegal?

[preter_s]

GOD BLESS CHINA NUMBA 1! In all seriousness I do like China, they release cheap smartphones with Snapdragon 845, they've released so much stuff that rivals western products for not even half the price.

With idiotic Western consumers that still think the higher the price, the higher the quality - aka Apple users - it is no wonder that consumers world wide keep getting fleeced!

[peterb]

With idiotic Western consumers that still think the higher the price, the higher the quality - aka Apple users - it is no wonder that consumers world wide keep getting fleeced!

And another insightful, well thought out contribution to the discussion!