Over the recent years DeBeers has been facing increased competition from not only new competitors, but from a new line of diamond products. This product is known as synthetic diamonds. They are a lot more cost efficient for consumers as they do not require as much resources to produce. Synthetic diamonds are also gaining more applications in various fields making them more versatile in their use and is a threat to DeBeers future operations when it comes to market share, and future cash flows.
This is quite different from the time that they were a monopoly on the world market. In the 1990’s, DeBeers ruled the diamond industry. Even though they only produced 45% of the diamonds worldwide, they sold 80% of total supply. They were able to control the supply of diamonds on the market and as a result, were able to control prices of diamonds in order to prevent other from entering. By the 1990’s they also had a stock pile of diamonds, which was worth $2.5 billion, but after purchasing diamonds from others their stock pile doubled to $5 billion. When competitors attempted to enter the market they would flood the …show more content…
They are also starting to realise that the next generation technology will greatly benefit from using diamonds as their silicon counterparts are more sensitive to heat. This would drastically improve technology with Moore’s Law and allowing for the next step when it comes to future development of products. This can be quite alarming to DeBeers as real diamonds cause quite a few barriers when it comes to using diamonds as semi-conductors. (1) They are too expensive to use in such a scaled up way (2) Never consistent and steady supply of large pure diamonds and they did not have the same electrical properties, but CVD fixed that problem. (3) No one has been able to produce a negatively charged diamond with significant conductivity to form microchip
This is quite different from the time that they were a monopoly on the world market. In the 1990’s, DeBeers ruled the diamond industry. Even though they only produced 45% of the diamonds worldwide, they sold 80% of total supply. They were able to control the supply of diamonds on the market and as a result, were able to control prices of diamonds in order to prevent other from entering. By the 1990’s they also had a stock pile of diamonds, which was worth $2.5 billion, but after purchasing diamonds from others their stock pile doubled to $5 billion. When competitors attempted to enter the market they would flood the …show more content…
They are also starting to realise that the next generation technology will greatly benefit from using diamonds as their silicon counterparts are more sensitive to heat. This would drastically improve technology with Moore’s Law and allowing for the next step when it comes to future development of products. This can be quite alarming to DeBeers as real diamonds cause quite a few barriers when it comes to using diamonds as semi-conductors. (1) They are too expensive to use in such a scaled up way (2) Never consistent and steady supply of large pure diamonds and they did not have the same electrical properties, but CVD fixed that problem. (3) No one has been able to produce a negatively charged diamond with significant conductivity to form microchip