by Anna Filatova
06/19/2002 | 11:46 PM
Well, the ball usually comes to the player :) We hardly had some time to think about the speculations of the memory manufacturers as we received some info about the US Department of Justice being extremely interested in the memory business and in particular in anticompetitive practices effected there, such as agreements aimed at raising the prices, which violated the antimonopoly law.
The antimonopoly division of the department reported the beginning of their investigation against such memory makers as Micron, Infineon and Samsung. Maybe a bit later some other companies will also fall into this list. So far, they didn’t manage to find out anything specific, and the memory makers sincerely hope that it must be some pure misunderstanding. However, if they continue playing with prices the same way (and especially like last year: remember the damping the manufacturers created to make Hynix drown?), the problems will be inevitable. Especially, since the rumors on the negotiations about synchronous price increase and/or creating artificial shortages keep cropping up now and then.