Samsung's, if they have a tight enough grip on the supply. It strikes me as somewhat unlikely because I thought the semiconductor industry was more competitive than that, but I don't know enough to rightly judge.
It brings to mind those recordings of Enron traders literally giggling as they ordered a power plant offline to drive up prices during the infamous California rolling blackouts. Yee-haw, value creation!
If they make it, and not sell it, now they have to store it, insure it, and secure it. And then if they have too much, and run out of storage space, they now have staff with nothing to do.
Contracts can absolutely require you to deliver something in the future. That's often the entire point. Penalties for failure to deliver often depend on circumstance -- e.g. "our bargaining position got better and we want a higher price" isn't an acceptable excuse but "oops, looks like an act of god destroyed your chips, now you'll have to pay the higher price" is.
Laws play a role too. The most egregious market manipulation tactics are often illegal, especially when monopolies are involved. Of course, this doesn't do much to dissuade the manipulation itself, but it does make companies jump through hoops to disguise what they're doing. Samsung can't send a video of someone in a Darth Vader costume saying "The deal has changed." to their customers, because that would be a smoking gun and easy to prosecute. "Oops, 3% of the product was destroyed, looks like prices will just have to go up" achieves the same end but keeps plausible deniability in tact.
Or it could be a legitimate accident. There is certainly no shortage of things to go wrong.
Just remember: Hanlon's razor is trivial to exploit. Live by Hanlon's razor, die by Hanlon's razor.
There are some things which manipulating supplies are not allowed. These typically are foodstuffs, water, medcines, and other basic needs, under some circumstances.
I'm not sure Electronic components fall in that category.
There are great many people who would die if the price of their food, or their water, or their medicine doubled tomorrow.
If the price of flash doubled, many people would have to choose between less storage, slow storage, or less money for other things. But nobody will die.
In fact, I bet the intersection between the people whose lives would be at risk from a sharp increase in food, water or medicine, and the people buy any amount of flash every quarter is nearly zero.
Imagine that you run a charity. Your job is to save lives. Should you spend every penny you get on medicine and spend nothing on IT? Of course not. It's impossible to run a charity like that. You must have computers, and you would prefer it if they are fast and reliable. You choose to divert some money from your programs to have efficient administration.
Now imagine the cost of flash doubles. You're forced to choose between "less storage, slow storage, or less money for other things." All of those options mean more death.
Flash storage can be more important than medicine for the sick or food for the hungry.
It brings to mind those recordings of Enron traders literally giggling as they ordered a power plant offline to drive up prices during the infamous California rolling blackouts. Yee-haw, value creation!