Apple is one of the 10 companies currently in the bidding process to buy the Toshiba division that produces NAND memories for storage media. Those from Toshiba produce approximately 20% of the total amount of NAND memories sold on global markets, so we are talking about a company with a significant contribution to the industry.
Google, Amazon and 7 other companies are involved in addition to those from Apple, and at the moment it seems that Broadcom would have offered 18 billion dollars for the division. Apple undoubtedly has this amount, and if it were to buy this division of Toshiba, it could produce the NAND chips used as storage media for iDevices on its own.
It has been known for several months that Foxconn and TSMC are in talks to buy the NAND division of Toshiba, but it seems that now even Apple is involved. There is of course the possibility that these 2 partners of Apple negotiate on behalf of those from Cupertino in order to mask the real interest and not generate an increase in the selling price.
Despite offers from no less than 10 major companies, it seems that Western Digital is the one that made the best offer for Toshiba. Those from Western Digital already produce a significant percentage of all NAND chips sold annually, those from Foxconn having the least attractive offer because the Japanese government does not want to sell the company to one in China, fearing that the technologies will be stolen .
"The US tech firms — Apple, Google and Amazon — have become the next attractive bidders following Western Digital as Toshiba can have stable supply chains (for smartphones or data servers) from them."
Apple currently buys NAND memories from Toshiba and Samsung, and if they manufactured these components alone, they would substantially reduce their price, being able to develop the technologies for these components much better.
