Um, no? China already stole the IP from Micron. That's a completely separate matter. China (USA, EU, etc. too) are looking at the prices of memory and how the three companies seem to coordinate supply and price. FJIC, in the best case scenario, isn't going to start producing competitive chips until 2021. That's 2-3 years of extortionate prices at best. If FJIC fails to compete, indefinite at worst.
The entire tech industry requires DRAM. Where there's demand, supply will be created to meet it. If supply can't meet demand, the price goes up so the commodity naturally raises investment funds in growing supply. Aren't economics great? As long as there aren't any crooks forming trusts.
Everyone else is demanding fines but what good do fines do? Everyone here likely agrees Micron, Hynix and Samsung profited more from collusion than the alleged fines. They also agree that the proposed fine of $2.5 billion is inadequate to make them stop colluding. Fines are fines. They're not trust busting. Fines never stop trusts from doing anything. Only trust busting does.
Not a permanent institution (I floated the idea of 10 years). An international board that reviews interactions amongst the trust busted companies for violations of the contract. Basically the board would replace the Department of Justice (and other nation's equivalent) in determining whether or not they could go forward with a deal (e.g. if a Sirrius XM situation arises where they all end up drowning together, a merger of the weakest may be permitted to promote the health of the market).
Bad idea because production costs don't account for R&D. As nodes get smaller and smaller, R&D is going to keep rising relative to production. A competitive market accounts for that which trust busting achieves.
It was UMC (Taiwan) that actually stole the IP, which was then allegedly transferred to FJIC.
Funny I don't see the same being said about RTX or Intel prices, they're virtual monopolies as well in fact much bigger than the perpetrators mentioned here.
Yes & the tech industry needs to work around these limitations. If there is price fixing, like setting up a price floor below which they won't sell, then it makes sense to fine them heavily. If however there's just agreement to limit supply, the fines ought to be appropriated downwards. To increase supply these firms need to invest tens of billions of dollars, now how do you suppose they get this kind of money ~ govt subsidies, like in China?
I remember a time when 8GB DDR3 cost $15~20 US & supposedly these firms were selling them at a loss, that period (twice this decade) lasted about a year or more. I'm sure none remembers that or how Intel, Nvidia, Apple rarely lower the price of their products. What you're advocating sounds like price control, I'm not sure how that'll work out as the component makers are forced to reduce their profit margins but the likes of Intel, Apple, Nvidia et al make record profits year after year. Do you suppose the govt needs to make sure these companies don't loot the customers by limiting supply of their products?
Just to reiterate, fines are appropriate IMO so long as they act as a reasonable deterrent in dissuading such type of behavior, having said that capitalist markets are set up in such a way that mega corps will always find loopholes to exploit & in many cases cheat the customers. For that there needs to be tighter regulations & more/better
taxation, again IMO.
