Huh, so if prices are high then blame them on fixing and collusion? What blatant proof do you have?
They aren't setting any minimum floors or requiring retailers to set any floor. Heck, they don't even sell to retail directly anymore.
They aren't setting any minimum floors or requiring retailers to set any floor. Heck, they don't even sell to retail directly anymore.
[1] https://www.techrepublic.com/article/samsung-hynix-micron-su...
There is no law about an upper ceiling on pricing. Would you say Nvidia is price fixing because their volta products are priced "suspiciously high"?
> There's no smoking gun, but there have been lawsuits [1]
There are lawsuits like these left and right, read any company's 10-Q about how random law firms file suits in the name of investor losses or consumer rights. Doesn't mean those suit hold any ground.
> A lot of water cooler talk is happening right now that something is going on.
Seriously?
> Given that there is only 3 major players in the market these days with Samsung doing most of the heavy lifting, it wouldn't take much.
Still more diverse than Google Search, Microsoft Windows, Intel/AMD CPU, Nvidia/AMD GPU.
Monopoly (or Tripoly?) does not equate to price fixing and collusion.
No, but AMD would (I have no clue if they do) release a cheaper product and therefore get the biggest market share.
The problem is not about Samsung setting a high price. It's about all three companies setting that high price, seemingly together.
And how many AMD cards have you seen being used for DL? Hint: 0
> The problem is not about Samsung setting a high price. It's about all three companies setting that high price, seemingly together.
Parent is implying collusion and fixing on the sole basis of prices being above historical means, that's not price fixing.
Also, you're describing price fixing, not providing an evidence that it is possibly taking place. I work in Azure, so I know quite a bit about the current pricing environment around semis. It isn't as much as fixing as is the sudden explosive demand for their products.
* Take a look at the historical earnings for these companies, they were barely scraping by a couple years ago (Micron was under >$10B debt which was more than 50% of their market cap at the time). You can't justify capex on growing supply when you don't even have money to cover debt.
* Look at the trend of DRAM attach rates and software requirements for memory, nowdays everyone is happy running an entire instance of chrome for their communication, editor and what not; Deep Learning and data economy have taken off in the past few years which is requiring records amount of both logic and memory chips.
The current prices are a function of demand and supply. I do see them heading slightly lower on better margins due to lower debt and better yields on more mature processes (possibly even 1Y nm process node this year) but we'll be here for a while without any price fixing.
Price fixing is a serious allegation, you can't just come up with price history and throw allegations around.