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Regulatory Probe of LCD Market Widens
narramissic writes "Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., Sharp Corp., Taiwan's AU Optronics Corp., and a U.S. subsidiary of Taiwan's Chi Mei Optoelectronics Corp. on Tuesday said they have been contacted by investigators who are looking into possible anticompetitive behavior in the flat-panel display market. This follows Monday's announcement by LG.Philips LCD Co. that it had been subpoenaed by regulators in the U.S., South Korea and Japan." From the article: "The probe centers on TFT (thin-film transistor) LCDs, according to Samsung. They are used in a wide range of electronics products including flat-panel televisions and computer monitors, laptop computers, cell phones and digital music players. The three companies being investigated are among the largest manufacturers of such displays. The investigation comes on the heels of anticompetition probes in the DRAM (dynamic RAM) and SRAM (static RAM) markets. The DRAM investigation focused on price-fixing, which is when vendors cooperate to set prices artificially."
"But shouldn't these guys be investing their time and resources into industries where price fixing is a REAL PROBLEM that affects the consumer?"
I think they guys who would be investigating shenanigans in the cable and DSL world are the public utilities commissions, whereas price fixing in consumer goods is handled by other organizations. So they can't just drop this and start doing something else.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
A free market does an excellent job of supplying almost everything except a free market.