Infineon Technologies AG, Europe’s second-largest chipmaker, Samsung Electronics Co and Hynix Semiconductor Inc are among nine chipmakers who agreed to pay a total of 331.2 million euros (US$403.5 million) in the first settlement of a price-fixing case with EU antitrust regulators.
Mitsubishi Electric Corp, Elpida Memory Inc, Hitachi Ltd, Nanya Technology Corp (南亞科技), Toshiba Corp and NEC Corp also agreed to pay fines as part of the settlement. Micron Technology Inc received immunity in the case, the commission said in a statement yesterday. Samsung will pay the biggest fine of 145.7 million euros, followed by Infineon, which will pay 56.7 million euros.
“By acknowledging their participation in a cartel, the companies have allowed the commission to bring this long-running investigation to a close and to free up resources to investigate other suspected cartels,” Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia said in the statement. Such settlements in the future are “expected to speed up investigations significantly.”
The settlement is the first time the Brussels-based commission has reached an agreement with companies involved in a price-fixing probe. All companies that agree to the settlement terms as proposed by the commission receive a 10 percent reduction in their fine.
“Samsung accepts the findings of the Commission’s inquiry and is committed to conducting its business operations in full compliance,” it said in an e-mailed statement yesterday. “The conclusion of this inquiry, which will not impede Samsung’s day-to-day operations or its ability to meet existing or future obligations, enables Samsung to move forward.”
Hynix was fined 51.5 million euros, Toshiba 17.6 million euros, Mitsubishi 16.6 million euros and Nanya 1.8 million euros.
NEC was fined 10.3 million euros and jointly with Elpida and Hitachi got a 8.5 million-euro penalty and another joint one with Hitachi of 2.1 million euros.
“Hynix has already set aside provisioning for the fines and therefore there shouldn’t be any impact on the company’s financials,” Park Seong-ae, a spokeswoman at the company, said by phone yesterday.
A US Justice Department antitrust probe into computer memory chips used in mobile phones and computers resulted in four companies, including Samsung, being fined US$731 million. Samsung executives were convicted of criminal charges in the US investigation.
Micron wasn’t fined in the EU probe because it had told the commission about the cartel in 2002.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts