The Marmot’s Hole

By SHELTON BUMGARNER
Marmot’s Hole Guest Blogger

Ever since Apple announced its latest variation on the iPod theme — the iPod Nano — there has been a flurry of press reports about how Apple has leveraged an existing relationship with Samsung to quickly ramp up production of the product to meet the demands of the holiday season market.

According to investment Website The Motley Fool (registration required), Apple may have all but cornered the market on the “flash” memory technology needed to make the Nano.

Apple was able to keep the price in range of the original iPod mini by reportedly procuring its flash memory at a hefty discount to what others are expected to shell out. Subsequent reports out of Korea suggest that Apple has now taken up so much of Samsung’s output that it’s caused a bit of a NAND shortage, meaning that the phenomenon of continuing, relatively predictable price drops may be giving way to something more complex. It may be that in creating such a shortage, Apple simultaneously cratered the price of the flash memory it’s buying from Samsung while increasing the cost for others.

Forbes also has some interesting bits of information on the Apple/Samsung technology nexus:

As some have pointed out, the new machine was a risky move on the part of Apple Computer marketers. Any leaked information could have severely dented mini sales as potential buyers awaited the new device. So, too, could delays in product availability harm performance going into the holiday season.

To address those concerns, Apple kept the launch under wraps even tighter than other product introductions. It had been rumored for some time that Apple would introduce a 4-gigabyte mini. In fact, analysts from research firm iSuppli suggested Apple had secured 40% of flash-memory maker Samsung’s second-half 2005 output to meet production plans.

And, as you probably know by now, Samsung has a least one other similar technological trick up its sleeve.