Samsung Enters Guilty Plea

Samsung Electronics Co., the world’s largest maker of memory chips, pleaded guilty Wednesday to a charge it participated in a price-fixing conspiracy that damaged competitors and increased computer prices.

In accordance with an October plea deal with federal prosecutors, U.S. District Judge Phyllis J. Hamilton ordered the South Korea-based company and its U.S. subsidiary, Samsung Semiconductor Inc., to pay a $300-million fine -- the second-largest criminal antitrust fine ever.

The hearing in San Francisco federal court was the culmination of a massive, three-year investigation that has so far netted guilty pleas from three of the largest makers of dynamic random access memory chips used to store information in computers and other devices.

Earlier this year, Seoul-based Hynix Semiconductor Inc. agreed to pay a $185-million fine while rival Infineon Technologies of Germany agreed to pay $160 million last year.

A fourth chip maker, Micron Technology Inc. of Boise, Idaho, has been cooperating with prosecutors and was not expected to face charges.

The government claimed the companies conspired in e-mails, telephone calls and face-to-face meetings to fix prices of memory chips, which are used in personal computers, printers, video recorders and many other electronics.

Victims, according to federal prosecutors, included Dell Inc., Compaq Computer Corp., Hewlett-Packard Co., Apple Computer Inc., IBM Corp. and Gateway Inc.

Apple and Dell raised PC prices to compensate while others reduced the amount of memory installed on their systems to compensate, the government claimed.

The Justice Department investigation began in 2002, a year after memory chip prices began to climb even though the rest of the tech industry was suffering its worst downturn in history. At the time, Dell’s then-Chief Executive Michael Dell blamed the high prices on cartel-like behavior.