Antitrust agency launches check on Taiwan-affiliated memory chip consultancy
DRAMeXchange confirmed on Monday it is aiding Chinese authorities with their investigation, providing market information, historical documents and market analysis on the semiconductor industry, including hardware prices.
On Wednesday, China’s antitrust authorities launched surprise check on the Shenzhen office of DRAMeXchange, the memory and storage division of Taipei-based market research provider TrendForce, according to a Sunday report by Chinese semiconductor news site Jiweinet, in a signal that China’s investigation into collusion in the memory market is intensifying.
China launched in June an antitrust investigation into Samsung, SK Hynix Inc and Micron Technology, three large multinational companies in the semiconductor industry, which are suspected of colluding to fix the sales prices of their memory chips in China.
DRAMeXchange specializes in market analysis of DRAM, a type of memory used in most computing devices. The product is the focus of China’s antitrust investigation. Li Yi, a senior research fellow at the Internet Research Center under the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, said that the consulting firm is a key node in the DRAM industry.
“DRAMeXchange is very deeply involved in the DRAM market. The three major manufacturers are all their customers, and their reporters and editors are all very knowledgeable. It is very likely that the company had inside information that China’s antitrust authorities needed for the investigation, so the check on them is an understandable strategy for the investigation,” Li told the Global Times.
According to Hagens Berman, a US law firm that has sued the three companies for price-fixing in the US, DRAM prices saw a 47 percent jump in priceper-bit in 2017, the largest jump in 30 years. Market figures from DRAMeXchange show that Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron together had 95 percent of the DRAM market. Revenue in the first quarter of 2018 was $21 billion, with operating margins ranging from 57 to 69 percent.