🚀 go-pugleaf

rmilner@zia.aoc.nrao.edu (Ruth Milner) writes:

>Has anyone heard anything about a sudden dramatic increase in the price of
>SIMMs for SPARCstations (and probably other systems)?

>A few weeks ago we ordered some 4MB SIMMs and paid about $125 each. Today
>we called the same vendor and were told the lowest he could tell to us for
>was $225 each!! Something about a lawsuit against Korean SIMM manufacturers

Your government at work.  The Feds decided that the Koreans were
"dumping" memory chips in the US, so they imposed a stiff (70%, or
something like that) tariff on Korean memory chips.  This has had a
dramatic effect on "spot" prices for memory.  The barometer of memory
prices around here is the ad that Fry's Electronics runs every day
in the San Jose Mercury News.  4 MB x 9 SIMMS were down to about $109
a couple of weeks ago, but now are about $160.  Your example of $125
increasing to $225 does seem a bit extreme.

>If it really is an epidemic, it seems to me that the price has been raised in
>anticipation of a shortfall or future increase, because they must still be
>running on current stock. Kind of like gas prices shooting up at the pump
>as soon as (or before) oil prices go up

Exactly.

>This 
>would seem to be borne out by the fact that this guy told us to wait "a couple 
>of weeks" and it might get sorted out ...

The story in the local paper here suggested the same thing, although
they also said that other factors might keep memory prices high for 6
months or so.


Steve Jay
shj@ultra.com  ...ames!ultra!shj
Ultra Network Technologies / 101 Dagget Drive / San Jose, CA 95134 / USA
(408) 922-0100 x130	"Home of the 1 Gigabit/Second network"