Sony Under Investigation by DOJ

An anonymous reader writes "As the DOJ continues its investigation into RAM price fixing, it has started looking at Sony's operations. With all the negative press Sony has been getting, this couldn't come at a worse time." From the article: "The Japanese company received a subpoena from the Justice Department's antitrust division seeking information about Sony's static random access memory, or SRAM, business, company spokesman Atsuo Omagari said. 'Sony intends to cooperate fully with the DOJ in what appears to be an industrywide inquiry,' the company said in a short statement."

Comments

Re:Holy FUD Batman!

[theStorminMormon]

Yeah, because we wouldn't expect a quote from Sony about the status of a DOJ investigation into Sony to be, you know, biased anything.

-stormin

Re:Holy FUD Batman!

[theStorminMormon]

FTA:

"Earlier this month, U.S.-based chipmaker Cypress Semiconductor Corp. said its SRAM operations were also under investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice."

That's one other company under investigation. Maybe the investigation is industry-wide, maybe it's not. There's no reason to assume Zonk is more biased than Sony. I mean, who could possibly be more biased about the fate of Sony than Sony?

In any case "everyone else was pricefixing too" (or whatever the charges, if any, turn out to be) is hardly likely to make the damage of this story go away. We've got ridiculous PS3 prices, the whole Sony DRM fiasco, the exploding laptop batteries, and now this. Even if this was an industry-wide problem, it's not like Cypress Semiconductor Corp has exactly had front-page news of any kind recently. This is like strike 4 for Sony, strike 1 for everyone else. The fact of the matter is that Sony is far, far more vulnerable to this press than another company due to both previous bad press and the vulnerable financial position they're in running up to the launch of the PS3.

I think I see vultures starting to circle...

-stormin

Re:Holy FUD Batman!

[Red Flayer]

"Sony intends to cooperate fully with the DOJ in what appears to be an industrywide inquiry," the company said in a short statement. (Emphasis mine).

I'll amend your selective emphasis a bit:

Sony intends to cooperate fully with the DOJ in what appears to be an industrywide inquiry," the company said in a short statement.

Does it look a little different now? I think we've all learned to never take the statements of a company under investigation at face value -- they've shareholders and executives to protect, after all.

I'm sure price-fixing is industry-wide

[Red Flayer]

"As the DOJ continues its investigation into RAM price fixing, it has started looking at Sony's operations."
"'Sony intends to cooperate fully with the DOJ in what appears to be an industrywide inquiry,' the company said in a short statement."
So in other words...
DOJ: "Let's see... next on the list is... Sony, you're up."

Well, how could a price-fixing inquiry NOT be industry-wide? The whole mechansim of price-fixing is that you get everyone in the industry to set prices at an artificially high level. Any industry member who didn't participate would break the scheme, as long as they had the production capacity.

So, when people say that Sony isn't being singled out, that they're just one of many... that's exactly the point of the investigation.

Re:soon to be followed by...

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget the Sony CCD sensor recall which affected almost 190 digital camera and camcorder models from eight manufacturers, as well as certain other products such as PDAs with built-in digicams.