Indeed. The market is changing. The overall personal electronic (computational) device market (Desktop, Laptop, Mobile/Tablet) is growing year over year, and because of that, mac shares going up doesn't mean Desktop PC ownership/sales are being cannabilized. Desktop Market (in terms of yearly sales) is relatively stable, and in terms of ownership continues to grow, while laptop/mobile/tablet (regardless of Mac/Android/Windows/Arm/etc) is growing healthily.
Crucial didn't leave because no one was buying RAM, or even that less people were buying RAM. Or at least that was the situation prior to shit going sideways with pricing/availability in the past 2 months, but that's independent of Apple/Crucial/Micron. They left because there's been little margin in unbuffered DIMMs (aka consumer RAM) for years, and there's virtually no demand or opportunity for innovation in the space for Micron to leverage the brand to make their B2B/Enterprise sales look better, and what Does make them stand out (largely cosmetics these days) is not a core competency of crucial or Micron. There's even less demand for anything interesting/innovative/worth having a whole separate company/BU for in the markets that are growing (Apple, Mobile, Laptops).
Also, now is a prime opportunity to exit the market, but it's also clear this has been in the works for a while though. Look at their limited and frankly half-assed product offerings for DDR5, then compare to what they offered on DDR4. Substantially less SKU's, with very little offerings for the enthusiast market. This wind down started circa 2020.
As far as Crucial is concerned, Apple has never been relevant or a danger to their bottom line. And if Micron wanted in on that money, they're better served doing it as Micron, as opposed to Crucial, which was tantamount to operational overhead in that context.
Crucial didn't leave because no one was buying RAM, or even that less people were buying RAM. Or at least that was the situation prior to shit going sideways with pricing/availability in the past 2 months, but that's independent of Apple/Crucial/Micron. They left because there's been little margin in unbuffered DIMMs (aka consumer RAM) for years, and there's virtually no demand or opportunity for innovation in the space for Micron to leverage the brand to make their B2B/Enterprise sales look better, and what Does make them stand out (largely cosmetics these days) is not a core competency of crucial or Micron. There's even less demand for anything interesting/innovative/worth having a whole separate company/BU for in the markets that are growing (Apple, Mobile, Laptops).
Also, now is a prime opportunity to exit the market, but it's also clear this has been in the works for a while though. Look at their limited and frankly half-assed product offerings for DDR5, then compare to what they offered on DDR4. Substantially less SKU's, with very little offerings for the enthusiast market. This wind down started circa 2020.
As far as Crucial is concerned, Apple has never been relevant or a danger to their bottom line. And if Micron wanted in on that money, they're better served doing it as Micron, as opposed to Crucial, which was tantamount to operational overhead in that context.