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EC fines DRAM producers
THE ANTITRUST ARM of the European Commission has hurled a whopping €331 million fine in the direction of DRAM producers.
The ten DRAM firms were running a pricing cartel, according to the EC, and this is best fixed with a fine. Firms that potentially will be hiring new accountants and lawyers are Micron, Samsung, Hynix, Infineon, NEC, Hitachi, Mitsubishi, Toshiba, Elpida and Nanya. Of these only Micron escaped being fined, thanks in part, or mostly, to its turning whistleblower.
According to an EC statement, Micron "revealed the existence of the cartel to the Commission. Cartel settlements allow the Commission to speed up investigations, free up resources to deal with other cases and generally improve the efficiency of its antitrust enforcement". The other firms were slightly less forthcoming, but reading between the lines it appears that there was some sort of orgy of guilty outpourings.
"This first settlement decision is another milestone in the Commission's anti-cartel enforcement. By acknowledging their participation in a cartel the companies have allowed the Commission to bring this long-running investigation to a close and to free up resources to investigate other suspected cartels. As the procedure is applied to new cases it is expected to speed up investigations significantly", said Commission vice president and competition commissioner Joaquín Almunia.
In return for their confessionals, the fined parties were given a ten per cent reduction on their fines, along with some other concessions.
The fines are the result of an eight year investigation by the EC and regulators in the US, and this could be just the first salvo of fines in the pricing cartel case. For now Samsung got the biggest fine, €145 million, Infineon was fined €56.7 million and Hynix €51.5 million. Nanya got the lowest fine at €1.8 million.
According to Gartner, DRAM is big business, and in Q1 of this year saw market sales of $9.5 billion. Gartner's figures put Samsung at the top of the earnings pile. µ
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Monopoly = stop of competition.
No competition = price fixing.
Price fixing = 100% profit.
100% profit = no incentives to improve.
No improvement = no progress.
No progress = no productivity.
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We lose. Our money buy less.
While
the crooks also in part lose but they do not care because... flow in the sea of money like those pigs in the mud.
Things are that "We" are 99.99% of current readers. But psychological reality is that the same 99.99% of them being by magic chance in the "Pigs" category would never complain about being in Al Capone's brotherhood.
Interesting, what i'd do myself? :-\
On Hyybrid side: sataII 2.5 incher with 4 Gb SSD Chips, going to 200 Gb/s in 2.2 tech, summer will bring on 3.0 techspecs for Flash drive & move up to USB3 as serious speed heaven, Here:
Open NAND Flash Interface (ONFI) working group has been working on its standards based approach to increasing NAND speeds since 2006. Version 2.0 increased speeds to 133MB/s from the mere 50MB/s of Version 1.0, while the latest iterations are capable of up to 200MB/s.
The true USB 3.0 renaissance will come with the introduction of the ONFI 3.0 specification and its maximum speeds of 400MB/s, doubling the speed of the previous generation ONFI 2.2 specification. ONFI 3.0 is still being defined and is expected to be completed this summer, with the first products coming in 2011.
Intel/Micron Flash Technologies (IMFT) may be the first to incorporate ONFI- Open NAND Flash ?Instrucs-Interface 3.0 technology News due to fact CHEAP to manufacturer. Seriously breaking price barriers.
drashek
There is no reason at all except a shortage of raw materials or demand as to why a 2Gb stick would rocket from £19 to £34 in six months.
Well done, hopefully they will heed this warning.
This is nothing new, as corporations will always break the law if the profits made are bigger than the hit taken for breaking the law. What's somewhat new is that they have admitted guilt, since corporations, like every psychopath out there are unable to feel any kind of guilt. As I said, nothing that hasn't happened before, corporations will continue to be unlawful as their pathological search for profit continues. It's just business...
Europe fines DRAM makers for price fixing but still nothing is done about OPEC? The worlds biggest cartel remains untouchable because the worlds governments are afraid to challenge oil price fixing. I guess there is too much a stake to risk pissing of the oil producers.