If That's Price Fixing, You're Doing It Wrong

from the price-fixing-means-prices-don't-drop... dept

There was plenty of news coverage this week of the $585 million in criminal fines against Sharp, LG and Chunghwa for price fixing on LCD displays. LG is paying the largest share at $400 million -- though, in the interest of disclosure, I should note that I'm writing this post using an LG LCD monitor that I got for quite a good price a few months back. And that brings up an issue I haven't seen addressed anywhere, other than by Adam Theirer: if this was price fixing, the companies were doing it wrong. Prices on LCDs were sliding very quickly, and it while there may have been some collusion among these three providers, it didn't seem to do much good. That's partly because there were plenty of other providers in the market, so any attempt at collusion was rather ineffective in stopping the rapid decline in prices. Sure, collusion is a bad thing, but we see this over and over again in antitrust enforcement: regulators keep punishing certain activities without bothering to see if they actually do anything to harm consumers.

Filed Under: lcd, price fixing
Companies: chunghwa, lg, sharp

Australia May Ban Plasma And LCD TVs Over Energy Concerns

from the just-replace-them-with-flourescents dept

Australian politicians are clearly concerned about energy consumption. Earlier this year, they were among the first to look to ban the incandescent bulb in favor of fluorescent bulbs. Now it looks like they're getting ready to take on televisions. New regulations may end up effectively banning both plasma and LCD TV screens as energy hogs (found via The Raw Feed). We all know that these big screen TVs are the SUVs of the electricity world, but does that really mean they should be banned completely? There are definitely efforts under way to make the systems more energy efficient, and many buyers are certainly aware of these issues (or they are as soon as they get their electricity bills). If anything, this seems like the sort of problem that works itself out without the need for the government to step in and force folks back into the world of big bulky TVs with (gasp!) small screens. Update: As noted in the comments, the Australian gov't has come out to say that a ban on plasma and LCD TVs is greatly exaggerated.

Filed Under: australia, energy, lcd, plasma, tv