Linked by weildish on Sun 18th Jan 2009 23:33 UTC
Current and former executives from LG, Chunghwa, and Sharp have all agreed to plead guilty to various charges of fixing the prices of TFT-LCD screens. The executives will face six to nine months in jail, pay $20,000-$50,000 fines, and have also agreed to help the United States government in other LCD price fixing investigations. The companies themselves are ending up having to pay criminal fines to the government of $585 million, collectively. It was mentioned that Sharp was fixing the prices of LCDs sold to Apple, Dell, and Motorola. Hopefully this means that the prices of technology utilizing LCD screens is going to drop from this point onwards, but in times like these, you never do know.
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Member since:2006-01-10
Please make an effort to read the article before you comment. Price fixing means that you talk to the competition and agree to fix a certain price so that buyer can't play them off of each other. For instance, from the article, "an LG employee...conspired with unnamed employees from other panel makers to suppress and eliminate competition by fixing the prices of TFT-LCD panels" In industries that have a relatively small number of manufacturers (e.g. LCD manufacturers) this becomes akin to a cartel or even a monopoly - as far as pricing is concerned.
Member since:2006-01-10
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Member since:
2006-01-10
What's wrong with price fixing. LCDs are not monopolies like water or telecom companies. Nor are they any kind of infrastructure where they can lockin users. LCDs are a commodity product. I say let them pricefix to their hearts content.
Another company is free to push for lower prices to gain marketshare. Components that utilize LCDs might also be interested in lower prices and would push and play LCD manufacturers against each other.