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Japanese Government Raids Intel Tokyo Offices
mordicus writes "Reuters
is reporting that Japanese Trade Officials have raided Intel's Japan Offices. From the article:
'Japan's fair trade watchdog raided the offices of Intel Corp's Japanese unit on
Thursday and a government source in Tokyo said the chip giant is suspected of violating
antitrust laws.' Japan seems to be rather vigilant in enforcing its antitrust legislation. Microsoft's Japanese unit was target of a
similar operation
less than two months ago."
Intel has been trying to stop Japanese OEMs from using AMD chips.
You are wrong if you think any American company is going to march into Japan and tell the Japanese how to run their business. Very wrong!
The Japanese are known for protecting their own, at any cost, from non-Japanese threats. To say such protectionism a cornerstone of their culture is an understatement. Chances are that Intel tried to go John Wayne* on their Japanese suppliers/distributors, and they replied to the threat in their own special way: Using Tokyo to respond for them.
* - Being an American currently living in Japan, I can say that acting American in a Japanese Business setting is like walking upto the plate, in baseball, with 2 strikes against you.
I suspect that this 'raid' is mostly political. Japan historically has vastly different standards between what Japanese companies can do and what foreign companies can do in Japan. If there is ever a question of whether to forward the interests of a Japanese company or apply the law as written fairly when such a situation would benefit the foreign company, the Japanese government will always support the local team.
Check out the dozens of books written about Japanese business-government practices with American companies in the 1980s.
With all respect due, I don't see how anyone could use the words 'Japanese anti-trust law' together seriously unless they are referring to a government-keiretsu coalition to destory a foreign company and assign their market to a Japanese concern. There's just too much history to suggest otherwise.
it could be that microsoft ratted intel out for leniency....u know...the wintel issue from back in the day, before AMD became as big a contender as they are now; to the point that AMD now dictates what's in the X86-64 extension instruction set, etc. (even the rumor mill is spewing out that Intel will implement some of those extensions for some of their 32bit P4's later on)
(which is has to be if you are going to accuse it of monopolistic practices)
Says who? You can have monopolistic practices without being a monopoly. Isn't that what everybody has been saying about Microsoft all these years?
According to Columbia Guide to Standard American English the -istic suffix means:
"in imitation of" or "having some characteristics of,"
In most countries 25% of the market is considered a monopoly for legal purposes, so yes they clearly are a monopoly, and should AMD break the 25% mark they too would be a monopoly.
This helps the law take on duopolies and oligopolies which have most of the powers associated with a monopoly.
AC
The Japanese gained over 80% market share for DRAM in the 80's, and then a mysterious fire destroyed a glue factory that was needed for some aspect of production. Alas, production dropped. DRAM prices went through the roof, and stayed that way until the Koreans broke the monopoly in the 90's.
But there was no hint of wrongdoing. Would you like some whale sushi?
---- "If we have to go on with these damned quantum jumps, then I'm sorry that I ever got involved" - Erwin Schrodinger
I haven't heard of this book, but may have to check it out. One of my oldest friends works there, we grew up together (in our 30's now). I was just out visiting him, and I have to tell you that Intel seems like a nice place to work. He gets very nice stock options. He has been getting decent to very good bonuses for the last 7 years. After 7 years, they get a sabattical - 3 months paid time off, plus his vacation for the year. He gets to telecommute 1 day a week, as does most of the other people he works with. They have a very casual attire policy.
He said their policy is to always compensate their employees better than the industry average, and much better than the industry average during times when the economy is bad. Which is much better than where I work now, where I am consistently reminded that "I am lucky to even have a job." But he is a quality control engineer, I am a software guy. I know this guy, and he wouldn't bullshit me. He really loves his job at Intel.
Now that says nothing about their business practices. He did say they are very careful about trade secrets, and there is this feel that people are watching you. But Intel does have trade secrets that a lot of people would like to steal.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Hard to declare Intel a monopoly? On the contrary, if AMD has 12% of the market it sounds like declaring Intel a monopoly is a slam-dunk.
In the US, the threshold for a monopoly is not 100%. If you are twice as big as the nearest competitor and the nearest competititor is bigger than all the rest of the competition, you can be considered a monopoly. Even if a competitior is gaining ground on you. It is not illegal to be a monopoly. However monopolies do have another layer of restrictions with which they must comply.
Outside the US I doubt that 12% amounts to proof that a monopoly does not exist.
I have a feeling you're thinking of the South Korean government who was backing Hynix with multi-billion dollar subsidies. Both the US and EU hit Hynix cheaps with a substantial tariff last summer, which drove up the price of DDR to a point which it's only just now starting to recover from.
I hear some figure about how criminals in Japan have a 80-90% chance of being caught, where as in the US, it's more like 20-30%.
No, Japan's about on par with the US there--in fact there've been news reports lamenting how the Japanese rate of catching criminals is "down" to 20% lately. The 80-90% figure is your chance of getting convicted if they take you to trial, and that's mostly because the police don't bring charges unless they're more or less certain they can convict you. (Even if you show up at the police station and confess to a crime, the standard procedure goes something like: confession --> interrogation --> confirm details --> okay, now we arrest you.)