It wouldn't be surprising to also see Japan make a comeback in memory - they are investing heavily (both privately & government) in semiconductor manufacturing.
Without what the US government did and still does, the prices of memory would have never increased so much and all the world would not have been forced to pay so much for memory.
If that is true (and given the reasons you provide below, and the general quality of your commenting, I assume it is) then the situation is similar (if less militarized) to that of the oil sector, where the cost increase is likely higher by perhaps three orders of magnitude.
A few years ago, the US government has added the Chinese vendors of DRAM and of flash memory on their sanctioned entity list exactly at the time when Apple and other major computer manufacturers were evaluating the replacement of products from Micron and the like with the Chinese alternatives. This was prevented by the "sanctions".
There is absolutely no doubt that the so-called sanctions did not have any other purpose than removing the competition for Micron.
The official reason is absolutely ridiculous, i.e. that they are among the companies that provide products to the Chinese military.
If that would have been the reason, then 100% of all existing Chinese companies from any domain of activity would have to be put on the "sanctioned entity" list, because any of them would sell to the military of their country, if given an opportunity, like all companies from USA will provide products and services to the US military, given the opportunity.
While the Chinese memory makers will obviously also sell to the military, almost all their production goes into consumer products, like smartphones and laptops, which are the main products affected by the US "sanctions" (which are no true sanctions, because true sanctions against China would have been accompanied and conditioned by some political requests, which is not the case for any of the US "sanctions").
There is also no doubt that without the US "sanctions" the Chinese memory makers would have bought the latest semiconductor manufacturing equipment and they would have had the production capacity to flood the market with their products when Micron, Samsung and Hynix stopped providing enough memory for anyone who is not among their top 5 customers.
Thus their is no doubt that the US government has stolen a lot of money from my own pocket when I was forced to update a couple of old computers this year, by artificially restricting the amount of memory that is produced and preventing competition in this market.
As I see it, any US citizen who supports the actions of their government to restrict the production around the world of various kinds of goods and to prevent competition in various global markets, actions that have increased the prices of many kinds of consumer products in all countries, is an accomplice to theft from a very large number of people all over the world, who are forced to pay inflated prices for such products, resulting in money that goes from many countries into the pockets of the shareholders of a few big transnational companies, including Qualcomm, Micron, Samsung and Hynix.
I would guess that the reason for any downvotes is that even if what you wrote is completely true it isn't really relevant, because the current problem is not lack of competition. The current problem is a huge increase in demand over a short time.
Even if there were no restrictions on China and they had latest generation fabs, they would not have had latest generation fabs just sitting around idle. They would be unable to meet the current increased demand for exactly the same reason everybody else can't.
There are 3 companies
(Who said that we can only talk like a pirate one day a year?)
This “quarterly, short term” reddit-ism or internet-ism is baffling since the businesses that have earned the most money for shareholders (to the tune of trillions of dollars, eclipsing all other businesses), all have leadership making very expensive, very long term bets.
Yes? That doesn't mean they can't spend billions on R&D. If Apple didn't sell iPods like hotcakes, they wouldn't be able to R&D the iPhone. That doesn't mean nobody at Apple had long-term vision, quite the opposite.
How can business leaders and shareholders spend money on long term R&D and still be accused of focusing on the short term and next quarter? If they were focusing on making the next few quarters look good, they would reduce expenses, which include R&D, and make profits higher for the next few quarters.
>If Apple didn't sell iPods like hotcakes, they wouldn't be able to R&D the iPhone. That doesn't mean nobody at Apple had long-term vision, quite the opposite.
I can’t parse these statements. Are you or are you not claiming businesses like Apple and Micron shareholders are focused on the short term?
>If I can sell my things at a higher volume for longer vs higher price and less volume now, I'll go with the first, but not shareholders focused on quarterly numbers.
What if a business is maxed out on production capacity? What if a business can sell things for a higher price now, and sell things at a lower price later?