Manufacturers of RAM memory face a cartel lawsuit in the USA

The rising cost of components found a scapegoat in California courts. A class action lawsuit, highlighted by Tom's Hardware, accuses the three largest semiconductor corporations globally of infringing the Sherman Antitrust Act. Together, Samsung, SK hynix, and Micron control a dominant 90% of the global DRAM chip supply. The complaint alleges that the trio orchestrated a deliberate reduction in the production of DDR3, DDR4, and DDR5 standard memories to cause a price increase. It's frustrating to see how the end consumer becomes hostage to an oligopoly that sets the cost of our entertainment while we watch hardware components reach prohibitive levels.

This backstage maneuver allegedly caused the price of these components to soar approximately 700% over the last four years. The central argument of the accusation is that the corporations shifted focus from their production lines to prioritize HBM chips, which are geared towards AI accelerators. As building new semiconductor facilities requires investments of tens of billions of dollars and takes years of construction, no competition is able to balance the sector. The companies defend themselves by saying they act independently and that the change in strategy is simply an obvious commercial response to the surge in AI demand. It's just a tall tale, as this corporate excuse conveniently hides artificially inflated profit margins.

The situation takes on a real crisis dimension as this supply crunch hit directly the doors of console gamers. Microsoft used the spike in manufacturing costs precisely as a shield to justify the global price increase announced for the Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S tags, noting that the amount spent on memories more than doubled. The company behind the green platform is already projecting a scenario of further shelf increases until 2027 if the market doesn't stabilize. Home consoles traditionally operate at the limit of loss in terms of hardware, relying on cheap components to remain accessible, so any supplier greed is passed directly onto the player's wallet.

The progress of the lawsuit will have to overcome a recent history of similar judicial defeats. An attempt to punish the same group of companies sank in court in 2018, being definitively filed two years later because the judges understood that the price fluctuations were part of the natural ebb and flow of a closed market, without evidence of an explicit conspiracy. The distinguishing feature of the current lawsuit is using the joint migration to HBM technology as the missing link to prove the cartel's coordinated action.

The market's memory, however, doesn't forget that this type of corporate cheating happened before with the same parties. In the early 2000s, U.S. and European authorities imposed severe penalties after discovering that Samsung, SK hynix, Infineon, Micron, and Elpida illegally coordinated prices between 1998 and 2002. On that occasion, SK hynix alone had to pay a fine of $185 million after admitting guilt.

Economic predictions for the coming months remain bleak. Investment bank analyses indicate that memory sticks will continue to get more expensive throughout 2026 and 2027, pushing any chance of technical stabilization to mid-2028. If these forecasts materialize, building a decent computer, upgrading a graphics card, or buying a console will become a luxury item inaccessible to the majority of enthusiasts. It's the predictable outcome of an industry that prefers to fuel the AI bubble rather than respect the traditional audience that has strengthened the electronics market for decades.