The US anti-trust investigation into price-fixing in the flash memory industry has been dropped.
The two flash market leaders, Samsung with 37% market share, and Toshiba with 34.5% market share, have confirmed that they have been informed by the US Department of Justice (DoJ) that the two-year investigation has been dropped.
Hitachi, which has a share in Renesas Technology which was in the flash business, says it heard from the DoJ in July that the investigations were being dropped.
See also: Electronics Weekly's Focus on Samsung Electronics
Other companies involved in the flash market are SanDisk, Intel, STMicroelectronics, Numonyx - the Intel-ST flash joint venture - Micron Technology. IM Flash - the Intel-Micron joint venture, and the Flash Alliance - the Toshiba-SanDisk joint venture.
Although SanDisk is known to have received a subpoena from the DoJ, it is not known whether the other companies have been involved in the investigation.
The DoJ found price-fixing in the DRAM market in 2006 fining Samsung, Elpida, Micron, Hynix and Infineon over $730m, and sending six Samsung executives, four Infineon executives, four Hynix executives and an Elpida executive to jail.
See also: Mannerisms, the blog of David Manners. Updated twice daily, it's the distinctive, entertaining, authoritative and never dull commentary on the semiconductor industry, from someone who knows. Sign up for the Mannerisms eNewsletter.