Apple has had prepay arrangements with most of the flash manufacturers to ensure preferential access to future supplies. Here's the press release for the first such deal; there have been more since:
Anyone with a billion to spare in 2005 could have done it. Apple needed to do it, because otherwise someone else with deep pockets could have killed the iPod business; the more ancient among us may remember DEC cornering the world market for a new generation of DRAM and hence cornering the market for large memory mainframes.
Register
FYI
Apple has had prepay arrangements with most of the flash manufacturers to ensure preferential access to future supplies. Here's the press release for the first such deal; there have been more since:
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2005/nov/21flash.html
Anyone with a billion to spare in 2005 could have done it. Apple needed to do it, because otherwise someone else with deep pockets could have killed the iPod business; the more ancient among us may remember DEC cornering the world market for a new generation of DRAM and hence cornering the market for large memory mainframes.