Submitted by Prices of flat panels have been dropping quite steadily ever since they first came to market, but apparently, they could’ve dropped a whole lot lower if it wasn’t for those pesky flat panel manufacturers. Three flat panel makers, LG Display, Sharp, and Chunghwa Picture Tubes (tubes…?) have pleaded guilty to engaging in price fixing schemes to the US Department of Justice, and agreed to a shared USD 585 million fine.
Flat panels are being used in almost every device these days, from water boilers to refridgerators, and usually, they constitute a large part of a computer’s or laptop’s total price. “In the last six months alone, the price of a 15.4-inch panel for a notebook PC has dropped to USD 63, from USD 97, and a 32-inch LCD for a television has gone to USD 223, from USD 321, according to iSuppli, a market research firm,” The New York Times claims. As most of us remember the day when we first opened that box for a 15″ 1024×768 LCD panel for our desktops, we will also feel the pain in our chest where the salesman took out our rib.
The case is not over with the fine, however. The three manufacturers have agreed to cooperate with the US Department of Justice to further the investigation, which is being conducted together with governments in the EU and Asia. The US DOJ states that among other companies, Dell, Apple, and Motorola were negatively affected by the price fixing scheme. They might have a base for a private suit against the three panel makers.
Isn’t this story just what “page 2” was set-up for?
Regards,
Tooonie.
IMHO, it is a very important and interesting computing related news that deserves front page.
at the same time, ubuntu-on-arm goes to page 2…
Why don’t they give some money back to the consumers that were directly effected by this? ( I doubt I would be effected directly )
With you on that… I’d love to see some cash returned to me from my Summer purchase of a new TV. On the other hand, I bought it at Circuit City… Hmmmm.
Well, how do you know Apple and Dell didn’t absorb the costs themselves?
because up until now those were the standard prices, so whatever they Apple/Dell were charging was with the price factored in, hence it wouldn’t really be “swallowing it” that phrase is kind of reserved if the prices had jumped higher suddenly but they continued to charge the same.
but yeah the question is now whether the consumer will see anything from this. My guess is yes, just because with the economy down I suspect that it’s better for them to sell more laptops than make an extra 20-30 bucks per, and a drop in prices would probably help that, though not having their numbers, I can’t say that for certain.
This could be good. Perhaps these companies will settle and offer computer manufacturers a much much better deal (discounted beyond what is normal) and maybe, if we are lucky, we will see some of that.
On the other hand, Apple and Dell might just swallow it and charge the same prices and make lots more profit.
I seem to recall that overpriced displays were cited as a reason for the EEE, OLPC and others failing to live up to their low price ambitions.
Now we know why.
Not for OLPC because its LCD is unlike traditional version because it can be read directly on sunlight.
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Display
Quite ironic, Asian flat panel cartel gets a fina of hundreds of millions of dollars, while the domestic banking cartel gets a hundreds of billions of dollars give-away. 🙂
In any case, the Asians have no idea what to do with the dollars they import for their exports anyway, so instead of buying US treasury bonds they might as well just give it straight to the DoJ in cash.
I doubt those firms with multi billion dollar revenues really care that much. Fines don’t help. Banning them from the market does. But consumerism is deemed to keep the American economy from dying (albeit in a coma) so I doubt they’ll ever do that.
globalization only “works” if the world becomes like usa…
anything else is to unfriendly to the US economy, and their big corps…
Edited 2008-11-15 20:33 UTC
The important question if anybody says “it works” is always “to whom”?
I.e., cui bono?
It’s the FIRE sector that rules the world, and we have to become aware of it and destroy that rule.
Multi-billion dollar fines would. The problem is humans, and the justice system, which is made up of humans, do not deal with scale well. By the time the fines get into the hundreds of millions of dollars people are thinking “Holy crap! That’s a huge amount of money!”, when in fact the corporate petty cash accounts’ expenditures for the year for the companies being fined might exceed that sum.
Price fixing is *far* more serious than a traffic ticket. And yet these companies get fined, relatively speaking, amounts which compare to their yearly revenues similarly to the how a traffic ticket would compare to yours or my yearly income, leaving plenty of disposable income for buying that radar detector we’ve been meaning to get anyway.
Capitalist states will never allow those type of fines to become a real threat to a multinational corporation anyway. On the other hand, the US wouldn’t really have to care much about Asian firms.. but given the fact that Asia is already quite upset about what the US financial system has done to them (I’m referring to the credit meltdown), I think there’s a line the US should not cross here. 😉
There’s more to this. The dollar has declined steadily over the past few years, and that hurts Asian corporations who see their revenues decline. Then again, they’re not prepared, or too much cowards, to just leave the US market altogether. The irony here is that keeping the revenues on a certain level by illegal price fixing might give US consumers (corporate or the shopping crowd) more of a break than when some of them would have decided to stop exporting to the US for the few crumbs it makes them, driving up the price in the US in the process.
The US market will slowly but steadily disappear for those firms anyway, the American consumer market is not going to be able to afford high-tech imports after the fall of the dollar, when it eventually happens.
The future for firms like LGE is the solar panel market, which will explode. I almost fear they’re toostupid to even see that.