Samsung, Micron and SK Hynix, sued for artificially inflating the price of memory in the midst of the RAM crisis
We are facing one of the worst times to build a computer or buy components due to the RAM price crisis in recent years caused by the AI fever. However, it seems that not only the brutal increase in demand that AI data centers have brought about are to blame: The world’s leading memory manufacturers have been collectively sued in the United States for conspire to artificially inflate prices and cut supply.
The lawsuit has been filed in federal court in California against Samsung, Micron and SK Hynix, three companies that control the vast majority of the global DRAM memory market. According to the case documents, these companies would have coordinated to keep costs inflated and be able to charge more to their clients.
If confirmed, we would be facing another case where multinationals take advantage of a crisis situation to reap more benefits and harm consumers.
Samsung, Micron and SK Hynix agreed to reduce the supply of memory to maintain high prices in the midst of the RAM crisis
The accusation points out that the three RAM giants exchanged confidential information to purposely reduce memory production and increase prices
Not only that, but the greed of these companies would have reached such a level that they would have artificially reduced the supply of DDR3 and DDR4 memories to further raise their prices, technologies that, precisely, have also increased their demand due to the abusive price increase of DDR5.
The lawsuit alleges that the oligopoly trio simultaneously cut production and destroyed distribution channels to focus their factories on much more expensive HBM memory. In a competitive market, the increase in prices of normal RAM would have caused some of the manufacturers to increase their production to gain customers, but the lawsuit claims that they agreed not to do so in order to charge abusive prices.
Most of these companies are repeat offenders in manipulating the market to artificially raise prices.
It is not the first time that memory companies have laughed at consumers, Samsung and SK Hynix, for example, were already found guilty of fixing RAM memory prices in 2005. In addition, other governments such as the Chinese one investigated the big three for similar issues.
Furthermore, as the lawsuit indicates, by having an oligopoly between the three and agreeing to a reduction in supply, it does not allow smaller competitors to increase production to compete at a lower price.
