Does anyone with knowledge of the industry care to estimate how much money these companies could make using such a scheme?

Considering how often these sorts of stories pop up (once in a while -- maybe a few times a year), and how profitable I would expect to be, I bet price-fixing happens way more often than once in a while. I wouldn't be surprised if it were the norm amongst big electronics manufacturers for most products.

I don't expect raising penalties to be effective at stopping this -- they're settling anyway. It's so profitable and so hard to catch that probably most companies would rather take the risk. If there were a better way of enforcing it, it might work.