Hasta La Gadget!

In a federal court in San Francisco yesterday, Hitachi finally admitted its role in a global LCD display price fix scheme, pleading guilty to a one-count felony charge.

The Japanese company has agreed to pay a fine of
Justice Department. According to court reports, Hitachi has admitted its involvement in fixing the prices of LCDs sold to Dell that were later used in monitors and laptops from 2001 to 2004.

The price fix basically involved secret meetings between top executives of companies and them agreeing to set a certain price to sell the LCDs to Dell, and thereby eliminating the natural forces of the open market.

A few months ago, Sharp, LG and Chunghwa of Taiwan also plead guilty to the same conspiracy of price-fixing LCDs in a massive anti-trust settlement. The price-fixing for those companies happened between 2001 and 2006 and also involved the selling of LCD panels to Motorola (for its Razr phones), and Apple (for the iPod). 

South Korea-based LG Display was levied the largest fine, at $400 million dollars. Sharp’s fine was $120 million (mostly for its role in deceiving Dell) and Taiwan’s Chunghwa took a hit of $65 million. With the Hitachi fine, the U.S. Government has now taken in over $600 million dollars.

If you think that’s a lot, well, it is, but it’s nothing compared to the overall worldwide take of LCD panels. According to the Associated Press, there’s a $70 billion worldwide market for them, and all of those companies have likely gained in LCD profits the fine amount many times over the years.

Maybe these pleas will force these companies to avoid using these methods with future display technologies, but I doubt that’s gonna happen.