Comment by mywittyname
5 hours ago
Micron is forced to stop under-investing in plants and will increase production. This will trigger everyone else to expand production and lower prices.
The whole point of the collusion is to ensure everyone is producing the same volumes and keeping prices high. The company that expands is the company that "wins" because memory is a volume game and it's all about hanging on the longest during the glut. So once one company expands, the rest have a choice of expanding or planning their exit.
If Samsung and SK lose access to the US market, they'd be fucked long term. Micron would kill them selling at higher margins and higher volumes in the USDM, while the rest are stuck competing for the international scraps - markets Micron is also allowed to compete in, if they wanted to.
Oddly enough, Samsung and SK Hynix decided that they needed to expand production on the same day another lawsuit accused them of colluding to keep production low and prices high.
> South Korea announces $520bn chip plant project with Samsung, SK Hynix
https://asia.nikkei.com/business/tech/semiconductors/south-k...