Memory Maker Elpida Fined $84 Million
Elpida, a Japanese joint venture set up between Hitachi and NEC, has become the fourth memory maker to pay a penalty for fixing memory prices. The $84 million fine is just a small portion of the $645 million that has already been paid by Samsung, Hynix, and Infineon.
The company admitted to taking part in a conspiracy to set the price it charged to customers, including Apple, Hewlett Packard, Dell and Sun, between April 1999 and June 2002. The case stems from a decade-long fight about who controlled the memory industry: Intel and IP company Rambus, or the largely Asian cartel. It’s a fight which has also pitted two US regulatory agencies, the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice, against each other. The conspiracy has already seen executives from Infineon serve jail time. Samsung, Hynix and Infineon have each agreed to pay fines totaling $645m in what the DoJ describes as “one of the largest cartels ever discovered”.
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