Slashdot Mirror
LCD Price Fixing?
bilsaysthis asks: "Bill Kearney poses a really interesting question, one which I've been puzzled by for a while too: 'What's with prices on LCD displays? On one hand a laptop can be had with UXGA resolution display for $1000. Try buying that display alone and you'll find it's also around $1000. Then there's how much they're gouging for the same resolution in an LCD television.'" Sadly enough, as much as I want one of these for my wall, the market is willing to bear these prices. How long will it be before this hardware becomes affordable?
Many of the laptop makers either own their own monitor factories (Like Sony) or get incredible volume discounts doing their own importing (say, Dell).
Items that don't sell well in "retail" channels get a much higher mark-up to make up for the small volume. The same item in lots of 1000 or more over and over again will sell dirt cheap. Ever noticed the price per 1000 of your favorite cpu when it comes out?
It's a bit of a catch-22. When customers buy more via retail channels, the prices will come down. When the prices come down, customers will buy more...
Eventually the retailers will get there trying to compete with each other, but with "most" (me and you not among them) customers are perfectly happy with what's out there now, there isn't enough demand for a big retailer to start stocking larger quantities and begin the price death spiral we've grown to know and love about computer parts.
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
I'm not sure you understand- price fixing is *exactly* the situation as described. You see, when manufacturers fix prices, all the manufacturers collude to set prices far above fair market value. In the modern world, they feel they can get away with it because if someone tries to undercut them they can revoke licenses and sue for patent infringement.
The point he's making is that this is a corruption of capitalism, and that the situation you're describing- lowered prices- is not occurring because of illegal collusion among competitors. This is encouraged in Japan (for an excellent fictional discussion of the topic, see Michael Crichton's novel "Rising Sun"), but frowned on in the United States. Unfortunately, stupid patent laws and unenforced hole-filled antitrust laws are what make this possible.