Monopsony買主壟斷和Monopoly賣方壟斷

Monopoly壟斷一字大家皆知，意乃賣方只有一家獨佔市場。Monopsony少為人知，意乃當方買主壟斷一切貨源。
而根據CNN Money，蘋果現在就處於Monopsony和Monopoly買賣雙方都可壟斷市場的地步。

根據老人先前引用的Asymco的分析，蘋果的現金在三月已達658億美元，現在大慨是700億美元。
蘋果的現金放在銀行可說是對財務一點貢獻也無。如何有效利用它？除了買創意公司外，就是"Monopsony"！
根據最近一篇在Quora發表的匿名文章引起大家的注意：
"Apple actually uses its cash hoard in a very interesting way to maintain a decisive advantage over its rivals:
When new component technologies (touchscreens, chips, LED displays) first come out, they are very expensive to produce, and building a factory that can produce them in mass quantities is even more expensive. Oftentimes, the upfront capital expenditure can be so huge and the margins are small enough (and shrink over time as the component is rapidly commoditized) that the companies who would build these factories cannot raise sufficient investment capital to cover the costs.
What Apple does is use its cash hoard to pay for the construction cost (or a significant fraction of it) of the factory in exchange for exclusive rights to the output production of the factory for a set period of time (maybe 6 - 36 months), and then for a discounted rate afterwards. This yields two advantages:
Apple has access to new component technology months or years before its rivals. This allows it to release groundbreaking products that are actually impossible to duplicate. Remember how for up to a year or so after the introduction of the iPhone, none of the would-be iPhone clones could even get a capacitive touchscreen to work as well as the iPhone's? It wasn't just the software - Apple simply has access to new components earlier, before anyone else in the world can gain access to it in mass quantities to make a consumer device. One extraordinary example of this is the aluminum machining technology used to make Apple's laptops - this remains a trade secret that Apple continues to have exclusive access to and allows them to make laptops with (for now) unsurpassed strength and lightness.
Eventually its competitors catch up in component production technology, but by then Apple has their arrangement in place whereby it can source those parts at a lower cost due to the discounted rate they have negotiated with the (now) most-experienced and skilled provider of those parts - who has probably also brought his production costs down too. This discount is also potentially subsidized by its competitors buying those same parts from that provider - the part is now commoditized so the factory is allowed to produce them for all buyers, but Apple gets special pricing.


Apple is not just crushing its rivals through superiority in design, Steve Jobs's deep experience in hardware mass production (early Apple, NeXT) has been brought to bear in creating an unrivaled exclusive supply chain of advanced technology literally years ahead of anyone else on the planet. If it feels like new Apple products appear futuristic, it is because Apple really is sending back technology from the future.
Once those technologies (or more accurately, their mass production techniques) become sufficiently commoditized, Apple is then able to compete effectively on cost and undercut rivals. It's a myth that Apple only makes premium products - it makes them all right, but that is because they are literally more advanced than anything else (i.e. the price premium is not just for design), and once the product line is no longer premium, they are produced more cheaply than competitor equivalents, yielding higher margins, more cash, which results in more ability to continue the cycle."
大意是說蘋果以龐大的現金和龐大的訂單為後盾，當看到一家新創公司有新科技產品出現時，蘋果便定下新創科技的產品訂單。但科技公司根本無法滿足蘋果的大量訂單，蘋果便可給於相關資金幫忙這些新創公司蓋廠房來滿足蘋果的大定單。如此一來所有新產品的先進零件幾乎控制在蘋果手中！所以蘋果總是比對手先一步出現新創意產品，而對手也趕不上！蘋果也幾乎是間接地控制了價格！