DRAM Price Fixing

AEton writes "There's an interesting article up at Newsforge, an OSDN sibling site, about price fixing in the DRAM market. According to Melanie Hollands, a technology analyst, market consolidation and uncertain prices have contributed to subtle cooperation between the major DRAM "competitors" to keep prices high. While she finds little "hard evidence of collusion", there are strong circumstantial trends which last year sparked a secretive Department of Justice antitrust inquiry." Allegations of this have been floating around for a while - heck, you can even join the suit.

Comments

Re:what sucks is globalization

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course you are actually complaining about the ridiculously high prices that render RAM unaffordable for you; Instead of showing off your ignorance on the subject of economics? No? Why not read Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt? Might save you some embarrasment in the future...

Price fixing? What price fixing?

[daperdan]

http://www.converge.com/eWebApp/jsp/pricetrends/Ca tegoryDescDetail.jsp
Take a look at the graphs on this page. The only segment of the market that appears to be climbing is the PC100 and PC133 products. This is common for products as they are phased out of production. I'd say the author picked a poor time to post this article. DRAM makers like Micron won't be able to survive if the current pricing continues.

It might be a little more fun to vilify a company like Rambus which is suing it's way to profitability, bending all consumers over with it's illegal obtained patent portfolio. (allegedly)

Re:One word: Sumitomo

[Reziac]

I asked my usual RAM dealer about this. They told me that in fact only about 10% of the factory's capacity was shut down, and the incident was indeed being exaggerated by everyone for the sole purpose of raising RAM prices.

The joke was on them, tho, because after the spike, prices fell to an all-time low ($57/gig for DIMMs).

I suspect present prices have more to do with having found a marketing sweet spot than anything else. They've learned that consumers will readily pay about $20 per 128mb, so that's where the pricing has stuck for some time now, regardless of costs.