November 21, 2005: Apple Announces Long-Term Supply Agreements for Flash Memory

One of the most oft-heard arguments about Mac pricing concerns economies of scale. The theory is that Dell's huge volume allows them to purchase mass quantities of PC components and glean the volume discounts.

The game was a bit different when it came to digital audio players. Here the king was Apple and with two models (shuffle and nano) requiring flash memory, Apple decided to take advantage of being the biggest consumer on the block.

Apple's increasing demand for flash memory led the company to enter into agreements to secure a plentiful supply at low low prices with four different manufacturers. The agreements were announced this day in 2005.