> I wonder why other big players aren't just stepping up and making their own SSDs
There are only a handful of fabs making the required NAND chips. Spinning up a new fab takes years and hundreds of millions of dollars, not to mention some serious technological and manufacturing know how. So it's really not easy for someone to just up and enter the NAND market.
I don't exactly doubt that price fixing is happening, but my understanding of current high SSD and even RAM prices at the moment is that there is a serious demand that outstrips the current fabs abilities. Mobile devices are eating up a lot of the NAND output.
There are only a handful of fabs making the required NAND chips. Spinning up a new fab takes years and hundreds of millions of dollars, not to mention some serious technological and manufacturing know how. So it's really not easy for someone to just up and enter the NAND market.
I don't exactly doubt that price fixing is happening, but my understanding of current high SSD and even RAM prices at the moment is that there is a serious demand that outstrips the current fabs abilities. Mobile devices are eating up a lot of the NAND output.