TechFlow news, June 30, according to The Paper, 14 individual consumers and three small businesses filed an antitrust class-action lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California on June 25, alleging that Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron have colluded to manipulate DRAM supply and pricing since 2022, resulting in memory prices rising by approximately 700% over the past four years. The plaintiffs claim that the three companies used the transition to High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) as an excuse to artificially cut the supply of traditional DDR3 and DDR4 memory, ignoring "all economic and business logic." The lawsuit also cites Apple's recent price increases for iPads and Macs as evidence that supply restrictions have affected downstream products. If successful, the defendants will be required to pay treble damages, and the scope of the lawsuit may expand to all consumers and businesses purchasing products containing DRAM.
It is worth noting that Samsung and SK Hynix were previously fined in the U.S. for price-fixing behavior in the early 2000s, with Samsung being hit with a $300 million criminal fine in 2005. Investment bank Jefferies expects that the high level of memory prices will be difficult to reverse in the short term, with prices still expected to rise quarter-on-quarter by 30% to 50% in the third and fourth quarters of 2026, and a significant decline may not occur until 2028 at the earliest.
