Dell Sues LCD Makers Over Price Fixing

March 15, 2010 By Geoff Duncan

Dell has filed suit against Toshiba, Sharp, Hitachi, and others claiming they have formed a cartel to fix the prices of LCD displays.

Computer maker Dell has filed suit in the U.S. District Court in San Francisco against Toshiba, Sharp, Hitachi, Seiko Epson, and Taiwan’s HannStar, claiming the companies have conspired as a cartel to fix the prices of LCD displays. According to Reuters, Dell has not specified the amount of damages it is seeking to recover in the suit.

The suit alleges the five companies have engaged in unfair competition and violations of antitrust law. According to Bloomberg, Dell claims the price fixing goes all the way back to 1996.

In 2008, Sharp pled guilty and agreed to pay $120 million in fines over LCD price fixing as the result of a long-running federal investigation; the same investigation saw executives from Taiwain’s Chunghwa and South Korea’s LG draw jail time for their roles in the cartel. In 2009, Hitachi also plead guilty to LCD price fixing on display panels it sold to Dell, and agreed to pay a $31 million fine. Dell’s suit apparently draws on information in the plea agreements for these cases, in which the companies admited to overcharging Dell for LCD panels.

In a similar suit, Nokia is suiing LCD makers like Samsung and LG for conspiring to fix the prices of LCD displays used in phones and other mobile devices.

Showing 5 comments

States reach $553 mln settlement for LCD price fixing at 5:22pm 27th December 2011 [...] Dell Sues LCD Makers Over Price Fixing [...]
Justice Department indicts president of Taiwan LCD maker at 11:12am 14th January 2011 [...] Many of the companies involved with the price-fixing scheme face lawsuits from gear-makers like Dell and Nokia. Early last year, executives from LG and Chunghwa pleaded guilty to participating in the [...]
Ian Bell at 11:14am 15th March 2010 I don't like price fixing either, but let's get real here. Dell is hurting the market with cheap products. Sure, as a consumer I would like to pay less, but when all PC manufacturers are making crap just to stay alive thanks to companies like Dell, there has to be an end to it.

I just checked some prices on LCD monitors, and they are all low to me. In fact they are lower in price now that they were 5 years ago. This seems to only be affecting Dell, not consumers on the retail front.
dang at 9:25am 15th March 2010 Hm, as a consumer I think it's horrible that they are price fixing. Who says it's low margin hell? That extra cost gets passed onto us consumers.
Jerry at 9:11am 15th March 2010 Tough luck Dell. You can't drag all of your partners down into low margin hell with you. Time to start building quality products, people are not afraid to pay more for something that is well built. Apple has shown that.