Why Apple wants Chinese memory it can't use

When Apple raised MacBook and iPad prices by up to 20 percent last month, wiping $263 billion off its market value in a day, it blamed "unsustainable" memory prices.

Then it went to Washington to ask permission to buy DRAM from a Chinese company sitting on a Pentagon blacklist.

Kim Yang-paeng, a semiconductor researcher at the state-run Korea Institute for Industrial Economics and Trade, does not think Apple actually wants to buy these chips.

He thinks it wants to be seen trying.

"From the consu ...