A number of TFT LCD manufacturers are under investigation by government regulators in Asia and the US for possible price-fixing. LG.Philips was subpoenaed by American, Japanese and Korean authorities on Monday, while Samsung was hit with legal papers on Tuesday. Further, Sharp was "contacted" by the Japan Fair Trade Commission and the US Department of Justice, though it's unclear if that meant it got a subpoena too. But the fun doesn't stop there, reports
IDG News Service, with the European Commission now getting in on the act, too -- the EC said that it was trying to "ascertain whether there is evidence of a cartel agreement and related practices concerning price fixing." Of course, this comes hot on the heels of that
video card investigation we heard about recently, as well as the RAM price-fixing fiasco that
Mitsubishi (and previously
Samsung) were involved in. We'll keep you posted if other display makers get swept up into this.
[Via
Slashdot]
posted Dec 12th 2006 6:35PM
This is amusing. Price-fixing usually means to control pricing and not allowing the free market to decide the worth of a product or service. If these companies were artificially inflating the value of their products then how are they able to continue selling them in such large numbers? I bet you will not find Sony complaining about this. In fact, Sony only complains about those other manufacturers that fill the market that Samsung, LG, and Sharp left a void in.
GhostDoggy:
The whole idea is that price-fixing is an anticompetitive process that hampers the ability of market forces to determine prices. And, presuming they aren't colluding in the alleged scheme, of course Sony wouldn't complain.
I just recently bought a 42 inch sharp aquos lc62c42u so far so good but I was thinking for a 100 more dollars i could change it to 47 inch philips what shiuld i do? should i keep the aquos and would'nt have problem with it?