Samsung Electronics, SK hynix and Micron have been sued by some consumers in the United States over alleged memory price fixing. With "chipflation" intensifying recently—including Apple's product price increases—local consumers and small businesses have taken legal action.
According to US tech outlet Wccftech and legal publication LAW360, 14 individual consumers and three small businesses including PC retailers filed the lawsuit in a California federal court on the 25th. The plaintiffs alleged that the three companies, which produce most of the world's D-RAM, colluded on supply and pricing from 2022, driving prices up by about 700% over the past four years.
The plaintiffs claimed the three companies reduced D-RAM supply under the pretext of transitioning to high-bandwidth memory (HBM). "The D-RAM oligopoly companies systematically coordinated the shift to HBM and the discontinuation of DDR3 and DDR4," they said. They added that Apple's recent sweeping product price increases were the trigger for the lawsuit.
The lawsuit is small in scale so far, but if the court accepts the plaintiffs' claims and formally approves it as a class action, it could expand. Bathaee Dunne, the antitrust law firm representing the plaintiffs, is aiming for a class action representing all general consumers and businesses that purchased products containing D-RAM. The firm previously won a case alleging collusion in Google's digital advertising. If the plaintiffs ultimately prevail in the class action, the defendant companies would have to pay triple the damages.
The fact that Samsung Electronics and SK hynix have previously been found guilty of collusion in the United States is also a concern. Both companies were found to have engaged in price fixing in the US in the early 2000s, resulting in large fines as well as prison sentences for executives. However, industry players including investment bank Jefferies forecast that the lawsuit will not affect memory prices at least until the end of this year.