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I've never seen LPDDR3 sold retail, how does it work?

Yeah, on those rare spec chips that are not on the retail market, Apple probably have to place custom order to the memory chip manufacturers for a low-yield production, which is definitely causing the unit pricing to be much higher than the mass produced memory chips. Economy of scale. (even if Apple is still a big customer, it's still a small order to make if no other computer makers use that spec of the chips)

>Apple probably have to place custom order to the memory chip manufacturers for a low-yield production

Except LPDDR3 is not a custom low yield part since they're present in phones, game consoles, SSDs, cameras, VR headsets, etc. They're as off the shelf as they get.

LPDDR3 is not sold on dimms.

I see some on newegg, but not much selection: https://www.newegg.com/p/2E2-003M-000G6?Description=lpddr3&c...

Those are for iMacs, and cost $719.99

It is sold on DIMMs but laptops generally do not have DIMM slots these days.

False, most laptops do have dimm slots. From gaming laptops to XPS and ThinkPads.

Only Macs and the PC ultra portables tend to forgo them.

Surely gaming laptops are a small percentage of laptops sold. I’ve seen more people with Chromebooks than gaming laptops.

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