ARM, Farnell, pricing policy's?

[MT]

How do Farnell and many other suppliers come up with their pricing policy for ARM based MCU's?

ST for instance have 10 year commitment which should suggest a price increase as the device approaching this
commitment to force users to migrate to newer devices. But that do not tell why some devices from same
family or close related families with very similar manufacturing dates with very similar specifications or better
have a rather large price difference. ST devices at Farnell is one such hoopla of pricing mess.

The "old days" concept of xxx number of RAM/Flash peripheral equals xxx increase in price is not entirely applicable.

Typically small price differences only matters to very large volumes and those who buy very large volumes buys
directly from manufacturer. Im not specifying any particular number of units since it depends on many things.

Since it's a ARM's race going and as i have understood ARm have fixed license per unit made price what kind
of pricing policy would ST apply to its distributors?