Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron Face US Class-Action Lawsuit, Accused of Manipulating Memory Prices via HBM Transition

According to The Paper, 14 individual consumers and three small businesses filed an antitrust class-action lawsuit on June 25 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, accusing Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron of conspiring to manipulate DRAM supply and pricing since 2022, leading to an approximately 700% increase in memory prices over the past four years. The plaintiffs claim the three companies used the transition to High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) as an excuse to artificially cut supply of traditional DDR3 and DDR4 memory, disregarding "all economic and business logic". The lawsuit also cites Apple's recent price increases for iPads and Macs as evidence that supply restrictions have affected downstream products. If successful, the defendants are required to pay treble damages, and the scope of the lawsuit may expand to all consumers and businesses purchasing products containing DRAM. Notably, Samsung and SK Hynix were previously fined in the U.S. for price-fixing behavior in the early 2000s, and Samsung was even handed a $300 million criminal fine in 2005. Investment bank Jefferies predicts that the high level of memory prices is difficult to reverse in the short term, with prices still expected to rise quarter-on-quarter by 30% to 50% in the third and fourth quarters of 2026, and a significant decline may not occur until 2028 at the earliest.