- A lawsuit claims RAM suppliers colluded to fix memory prices
- It says they did this by shifting manufacturing to higher-priced HBM
- But I doubt the lawsuit will make memory cheaper for consumers
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ll probably know that prices of PC components are out of control right now. Costs of computer memory are some of the worst affected, making upgrading your PC next to impossible for all but the five richest kings of Europe.
Now, it seems that some people feel there is something deeply fishy about all these price rises. Indeed, a recently filed lawsuit has alleged that the globe’s leading RAM producers — Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron — colluded to deliberately constrain memory supply and push prices up as a result.
According to the filing (via AppleInsider), the three named companies shifted manufacturing capacity away from DRAM modules such as DDR3 and DDR4 — that is, the type of memory used in phones, computers, tablets and other consumer devices — towards HBM, which is used in artificial intelligence (AI) data centers and sells for a higher price. With lower supply, memory prices rose accordingly.
On the face of it, that’s not illegal — companies are allowed to make strategic decisions to maximize profit if they wish. But what the lawsuit claims is that this move was a concerted, coordinated decision between the three firms, rather than each one separately responding to market conditions.
Because they have a stranglehold on the RAM market (up to 89% of DRAM market share and 100% of HBM market share, according to Counterpoint Research), the allegations of coordination — if proven — could amount to illegal behavior, potentially including price fixing.
Will this end the RAMpocalypse?
If you’re reading this and are desperate for some good news among all the PC component doom and gloom, you might be hoping that a favorable judgment in this lawsuit would open the door to lower memory prices and go some way towards getting costs back to reasonable levels.
Unfortunately, that outcome is unlikely. The lawsuit has not proven anything yet, and showing beyond doubt that Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron colluded to screw over consumers — rather than merely making independent decisions in response to the same crisis — will probably be exceedingly difficult to prove.
But even if the plaintiffs succeed in doing that, the lawsuit is likely to be a long, drawn-out process, with many appeals and potential reversals. And even then, it won’t change the reality that right now, prices are through the roof. We’re not getting any immediate relief, no matter what happens in the courtroom.
That skeptical view is widely reflected on social media. On Reddit, for example, user HorsePockets pointed out that HBM memory “pays way more than conventional DRAM and allows [the defendants] to transition away from being purely cyclical stocks.” Ramping up HBM production simply makes sense from a business perspective, they argued.
EloquentPinguin, meanwhile, put it this way: “If they truly think that DDR3 was wound down in favor of HBM, and not because it’s an almost 20-year-old technology with two well-established successive generations, then they might just be grasping [at] straws.”
That illustrates just how difficult this case could be to prove — and how little impact it might have on the ongoing RAM crisis. But the reality is that prices are completely out of control right now, whether or not memory manufacturers colluded to ensure that happened. Punishing the alleged culprits might feel cathartic, but it’s not going to put prices right any time soon. And that’s the real injustice here.
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alexblake.techradar@gmail.com (Alex Blake)
