A couple of news items caught my attention today, that made me wonder if Apple is fast becoming the Walmart of personal electronics? No, not in the sense that Apple is selling cheap crap, but rather in the way it's beginning to lock out the competition by exerting it's buying power over the supply chain.

For example, Apple has long had a reputation for selling premium products at a premium price, leveraging its cool factor to maintain oversized margins. But new reports suggest that Windows-based PC manufacturers are having a difficult time competing with Apple on price in the growing ultra-thin notebook category that Apple's MacBook Air currently dominates:

Asustek Computer and Hewlett-Packard will reportedly lead the charge with initial Ultrabook production but the former's 11.6-inch UX21 Ultrabook will reportedly retail for $1000 while the 13.3-inch UX31 will fetch $1600 — $300 more than Apple's new $1,299 13.3-inch MacBook Air.

[...] The matter underscores how Apple is slowly but successfully taking its proficiency in supply chain management, long-term component pre-payments, and cost effective designs originally conceived for its iOS device strategy, and transitioning them to its Mac platform, which has long struggled to compete with pricing from rival PC makers.

Barely a week goes by without some industry report of one competitor or another delaying a product due to a shortage of affordable touch-screens, flash RAM, and other crucial components, even as Apple ramps up production of its hot-selling iPhones and iPads. Meanwhile Apple continues to prop up its enviable margins by using its enormous buying power to demand ever lower prices from suppliers. As much as its great design and mind-control-like marketing, it is Apple's supply chain magic that has enabled the company to capture two-thirds of mobile phone industry profits while holding only a 5.6 percent share of unit sales.

Nobody expected iPad to sell so many units so quickly—not even Apple—and a big part of its early success was surely its aggressive pricing, which came in at nearly half most pre-announcement predictions. Likewise, one of the main reasons why competitors have had so little luck chipping away at iPad's market share has been their inability to undercut Apple on price. If Apple can leverage its supply chain dominance into a similar advantage in personal computers, that can't be good news for its competitors.

Apple will never make the cheapest products out there; that's not in its DNA. But given its current economies of scale, gone are the days when competitors can undercut Apple on value, and still turn enough of a profit to keep the lights on.