The Frustrating Reason One-Netbook Is Pausing Apex Strix Halo Handheld Sales

We've been eagerly looking forward to the OneXFly Apex handheld because it's one of the most interesting of the announced PC gaming portables to use AMD's Ryzen AI Max processors, codenamed Strix Halo. We've been so interested in it, we've covered it three times already since its September announcement. Well, unfortunately, if you were likewise interested in the OneXFly Apex, you might be out of luck, because manufacturer One-Netbook has just posted that Apex sales are "temporarily paused" on the Indiegogo page for the portable.

This is really a good thing from a big picture perspective, because it shows that One-Netbook is being forthright and transparent with its customers. The update explains that the company's current inventory of OneXFly Apex units is fully allocated with existing pre-sale orders, and that it is pausing sales to confirm inventory, i.e. to make sure it can actually cover all of the orders it already took.

But why not just make more units? Well, that's the part that sucks. One-Netbook says:

We need a bit more time to communicate with our memory and SSD suppliers, as the prices of these components continue to rise. These discussions are essential to properly prepare for the next phase of sales.

Yep. It's the memory shortage at fault, yet again. Because datacenters pay more per megabyte than mainstream consumers, all of the memory vendors have shifted production and sales to that market and its seemingly-insatiable demand. As we reported yesterday, chief U.S. memory producer Micron completely shuttered its legendary consumer brand Crucial in favor of selling memory to its "larger, strategic customers in faster-growing segments." In other words, Micron is shamelessly chasing the dollar.

It's not all doom and gloom exactly, though; One-Netbook says that the OneXPlayer OneXFly Apex will be returning to purchasability as soon as it completes the inventory review. What it doesn't say is whether the already extravagant pricing for the Apex will go up when it returns to sale. Given what's going on with memory pricing, we would be shocked if prices don't climb, but based on what memory manufacturers are saying, this situation is only going to get worse until the AI bubble pops, so better get while the getting's awful—before it becomes even more awful.