Collusion Behind Memory Market Crisis: Samsung, Hynix, and Micron Sued

The rise in memory chip prices and the decrease in supply in the global technology market may have been artificially created. On June 25 of this year, a class-action lawsuit was filed in California against Samsung, Hynix, and Micron. These three giants control nearly 85-90% of the global DRAM and NAND memory market and are accused of price-fixing. This is reported by Ixbt.com news reports.

According to the lawsuit, the companies used their dominant market position to deliberately reduce the production of traditional memory chips. This move was allegedly carried out under the pretext of transitioning to HBM (High Bandwidth Memory), which is critical for AI systems. As a result, a shortage of DDR memory chips for standard computers and devices occurred, leading to an unjustified price increase.

AI Pretext and Production Cuts

According to ixbt.com, the plaintiffs accuse the trio of coordinately reducing DDR memory production under the guise of restructuring their business models. Currently, demand for HBM memory for AI accelerators from companies like NVIDIA is very high, but this should not have had such a sharp impact on memory prices in the mass market segment.

In the Uzbekistan market, an increase in the prices of computer components, particularly RAM, has also been observed in recent months. If the companies' guilt is proven in this trial, it will be viewed as a major conspiracy that directly affected not only the global market but also the wallets of local consumers.

Is History Repeating Itself?

Notably, such "agreements" among memory manufacturers are not happening for the first time. Looking back at history, in the 2000s, Samsung and Hynix admitted to criminal charges regarding price-fixing. At that time, several executives were sentenced to prison, and the companies were fined a total of 731 million dollars.

In that conflict, Micron avoided penalties in exchange for cooperating with the investigation. However, in this class-action suit, all three companies are expected to be under serious pressure. Experts believe that if the court finds the allegations valid, the tech giants could be forced to pay billions of dollars in damages.

So far, representatives of Samsung, Hynix, and Micron have not issued an official response to this claim. This trial is expected to become one of the most sensational events in the tech world in the coming months and could completely change the pricing policy in the memory chip market.