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AnonTechie [soylentnews.org] writes:

Three companies that account for 90% of RAM revenue are being sued for anti-competitive practices.

The big story in computing these days is how an ongoing shortage of RAM (dubbed RAMageddon or the RAMpocalypse) has led to massive increases in hardware costs. The conventional explanation of the situation has been that shortages have been driven by the widespread construction of AI data centers. However, a new lawsuit [pacermonitor.com] (Garciaguirre et al. v. Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., et al.) filed against RAM manufacturers Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron, alleges that these companies are exploiting market conditions to artificially inflate prices.

The class action lawsuit filed by 14 individuals and three businesses accuses Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron of conspiring to fix prices and supply of DDR3 and DDR4 RAM, resulting in higher costs. “This lawsuit seeks to recover for—and stop—concerted anticompetitive behavior by three oligopolists in the market for dynamic random access memory, more commonly called DRAM,” the opening line of the suit reads.

DRAM is essential for virtually every computing device, as it stores the bits used for short-term data. Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron account for more than 90% of global DRAM revenue. The suit says that the firms have “fixed supply and prices for DRAM, engaging in conduct that makes no economic sense absent collusion and that has driven up the price of conventional DRAM (sometimes called commodity DRAM) approximately 700% in a four-year period.”

[Source]: Polygon.Com [polygon.com]

Do you agree that these companies are colluding ?

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