Infineon To Pay $160 Million For Fixing RAM Prices

Jerrod K writes "Infineon Technologies pleaded guilty to charges of price fixing in an international conspiracy. The Justice Department said this is the third largest antitrust settlement ever. Other memory chip makers involved include Hynix, Samsung, and Micron Technology." Reader phalse phace adds a link to CNET's coverage.

Comments

Re:Free market isn't perfect

[srwalter]

I wonder how much this court battle cost the tax-payers? Will the benefit outweigh the cost?

Further consider that: 1) you don't have to buy something no matter what the cost. If they want to charge you $100 for 16MB of RAM, you can either do that, or go without RAM. Or 2) you can always enter the business yourself. If they are colluding to lower prices, it would be in your (and other businesses) self-interest to undercut them and make an even heftier profit (an economical fact if the market price is above equilibrium). The colluders would then have no choice but to do likewise.

Look at Intel vs. AMD. Intel was the only name in the business for years and years, but AMD decided they could make a comparable product (arguably better) and undercut them. And they have made significant inroads doing so.

There's no reason the above scenario couldn't happen if, instead of Intel by itself, it was 2 large corporations colluding to sell processors.