Nokia sues LCD manufacturers for alleged price fixing (update: joins AT&T)
By Thomas Ricker 
posted December 1st 2009 4:19AM
posted December 1st 2009 4:19AM
Price fixing is nothing new in the LCD panel business. Hell, collusion is pretty common across the entire consumer electronics industry though it's difficult (and costly) to prove. Now Nokia, the world's largest maker of cellphones, is suing a who's who of Asian LCD manufacturers alleging a ploy to fix prices on handset LCDs. The November 25th filing in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, San Francisco division, names Samsung Electronics, LG Display, Sharp, Hitachi, and Chunghwa Picture Tubes as co-conspirators. Nokia, of course, is seeking cash and injunctive relief to remedy damages incurred and has the dubious honor of following another high-profile move launched against Apple just last month. With Nokia's high-margin smartphone sales waning against stiff competition, it's easy to understand why its execs would be miffed if they paid artificially high prices for panels considering the sheer volume of lower-priced handsets Nokia sells at razor thin margins.Update: Just dawned on us that this lawsuit (which we now know claims an 11 company cartel operating from "at least" January 1, 1996 until Dec 11, 2006) joins the AT&T action kicked off in October. Pile on! Nokia has also filed suit in the UK against both LCD and CRT makers.
AT&T did this first: Just google "AT&T sues LCD manufacturers over price fixing" - Nokia just follows the suit
@MJGAMER 1991 XBL
Well Joystiq did, at any rate.
http://www.joystiq.com/2009/11/30/pro-plantiff-erik-estavillo-subpoenas-bill-gates-in-rrod-suit/
@Phoenix WTF, why did they delete my post!
Those are Asian companies nokia, not Californian, and you are a scandinavian company not an US one.
@Wwhat
i remember your hate-post-reply to one of my posts 6 months ago. But upvoting you just caz your post seems to make some sense.
Remember this, Enemy!
@Wwhat
Sorry for nitpicking, but Finland isn't really one of scandinavian countries.
@Wwhat
And that is important because.....
The fact that you perceive all of those actors as Foreigners doesn't mean thay are. In orther to conduct their business they have stablished themselves in the US among several other countries. People/Companies doing businesses out of their birth countries are sunbject to the laws of those countries where they do business.
Seriously? I thought I remembered from my schooldays it was, guess I was wrong.
Mind you here's what wikipedia says (although that's no proof I know)
"..though Finland is often considered a Scandinavian country in common English usage, with Iceland and the Faroe Islands sometimes also included"
But the dictionary says
"1 a native or inhabitant of Scandinavia, or a person of Scandinavian descent.
2 the northern branch of the Germanic languages, comprising Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, Icelandic, and Faroese, all descended from Old Norse."
So it's a language thing huh.
I stand corrected, thanks for watching out for me.
@milkywayer
*blush*
@hugoliva Well they do such things strategically, who's most likely to make them win and where is the place to get the biggest compensation, I know that, it just seems a bit askew to fight a battle between a finish company and asian companies in US courts on some level don't you think?
@Wwhat
It's more of a historical thing as wikipedia explains it. Common mistake :)
One of the "Nordic Countries" is a more correct term i believe.
@xbit
Its Thomas Ricker writing an article on Nokia , what can you expect.
Just got new N900!;) Awesome device
@xbit I think Nokia's more qualified to speak to its Q3 smartphone
share than Canalys:
http://www.engadget.com/2009/10/15/nokia-posts-834-million-quarte rly-loss-smartphone-slips-anothe/
http://news.cnet.com/8301-30686_3-10375971-266.html
And Gartner (which measures units SOLD, not shipped) shows a decline year over year. Here's a direct quote: "Nokia's share of the
worldwide smartphone market reached an all time low in the third
quarter of 2009 at 39 per cent, compared with 45 per cent in the
second quarter of 2009"
http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1224645
@Thomas Ricker
Dear iRicker. Nokias Q3 was only negatively affected by the NSN division. The handset / devices division actually did very well.
Btw. Why am I displayed as "unverified" when commenting? I have a registered username and all .
Engadget is just angry cos Nokia might win the case against Apple and their beloved company might get damaged somehow...
Quit the fanboyism Engadget bloggers, it might help also the sinking traffic of this site.
@Thomas Ricker
Failing market share does not necessarily equal failing sales.
The Gartner article you link to only dicusses a fall in sales from Q2 2009 to Q3 2009. At no stage does Gartner compare like-for-like (i.e. Q3 2009 vs. Q3 2008). Sales are cyclical. Will Engadget be referring to every companies' "waning sales" in the quarter after the holiday season?
@madmac and you think the bloggers here care about real numbers?! :P
FUD is their business my friend...
@madmac See @xbit discussion above.
@Thomas
Sure it's true that Nokia's market share is sliding, margins are a bit down and so on, but why do you have to force this into almost every Nokia related article you post? It doesn't add any relevant information to the news story itself. It's all beginning to feel a bit constrained.
Yes I know it's kind of lame to whine about these things since this is in essence a website which feeds from the reader-writer interaction and personalities with different styles are essential, but hey still, if you can find a way to tone down the attitude even a bit it might help to improve this already great gadget blog. At least from an European point of view. Or maybe not. Whatever. This site still gets my vote for the blog of the decade.
@papari Next engadget post will be like this:
"Dell announces new Inspiron line -- have we said that Nokia market share is sliding and we love apple?"
@papari I hear you, I don't enjoy bashing Nokia endlessly. Unfortunately, I'm in Europe and thus have to cover all the Nokia news which for the most part has been rough lately. In fact you'll notice that we skipped the whole discussion on Apple being more profitable than Nokia in the cellphone business when all our peers jumped on the rah rah Apple bandwagon.
I added that sentence for one reason: motivation. Granted it's speculation, but I imagine Nokia would have less motivation to sue if it was dominating at the high-end of its portfolio reaping high-profits on high-margins. With margins so thin on dumb and feature phones, every penny counts.
@Thomas Ricker Your argument doesnt hold true since Apple sales are way up and still they are suing a clone-maker-garage-company like Psystar.
And its also funny to notice that you actually dont beat other worse companies, like Motorola and Palm, with the same argument.
Another way of seeing the facts is that Nokia is going UP right? Why I dont see this? When are you guys actually going to give the real facts and stop messing with words?
http://www.engadget.com/2009/10/19/apple-reports-fiscal-q4-earnings-1-67b-profit-mac-sales-way-u/
http://www.engadget.com/2008/07/16/apples-lawsuit-against-psystar-examined/
@madmac
I absolutely don't like this, but any salient brand (like Engadget) has a disturbing (for some people, in many ways) attention drawing style (check Apple and Sony). "Bashing" is clearly Engadget's style and it's not specific to Nokia only.
Also, you can't blame them for exploiting human nature to make money (more bashing = more attracted attention/visitors = higher ad revenue)
@Thomas Ricker
"And Gartner (which measures units SOLD, not shipped) shows a decline year over year"
Well, yes, but you're missing a few things:
1) According to Gartner market share is down by 3% however smartphone sales are up by 1.6 million. As I recall they were up YonY the previous quarter by over 3 million.
2) The decrease in market share is largely down to the increase in the US market where Nokia have no presence. There were 12 million or so smartphones sold in the US last quarter. Nokia accounted for a million at best. This is not typical of the rest of the world - share dropped by 10% in EMEA but grew by 30% is Asia Pacific for example.
3) The US smartphone market is primarily driven by Apple and RIM. Apple launched the 3GS at the end of Q2 with the bulk of sales being counted in Q3. The difference in growth rates between Canalsys and Gartner are where they place iPhone 3GS sales. That's why Canalsys shows a modest growth for the iPhone and Gartner's a marked increase.
4) In regions outwith the US where Nokia compete against Apple, RIM and others they generally sell more units than the next four or five competitors combined.
The problem is, Thomas, that you're reporting a very one sided view of things that doesn't take into account the facts. I'm not saying Nokia don't have issues but they're not anything as bad as you would have us believe.
Nokia
suing people
This article is so biased it makes me sick. Whoever is the author you're supposed to report the news and/or your personal opinion. Here you mix your personal opinion with the news...
"Nokia's high-margin smartphone sales waning against stiff competition"
"the sheer volume of lower-priced handsets Nokia sells at razor thin margins."
Give me a fucking brake will ya? These come straight from your mind.
@mythos1453
In Nokia's third Quarter Financial results they stated that average price per handset sold had dropped to 62€
No "brake" (sic) for you and none for Nokia either.
I agree Ricker...i used to shrug off all the biased comments. but this is really becoming annoying.
I just think it's ironic that an American carrier has the balls to sue anyone over price fixing.
This price fixing in the mobile lcd market has been going on for at least 10 years.
Att, as it may sound funny, has the ability to tap phone conversations of illegal practices in this if the government allocates it. Nokia is just doing what they can and is in talks with Att.... or should I say the already disliked Att.
I would not find it unusual for Att to use this in court.
How the hell do some of these writers get jobs with Engadget?
Scrotum, you're wrong if that's comment about factual news. Go to fictional means like the 'Onion' or 'Fox News Channel' if you want to fantasize about certain things.
This is in the top 3 read common article in Google.com tech news site.
Price Fixing happens very often. Just put the CEOs with a Hot Microphone in the room and I will have no problem as an Economist. Price Fixing is difficult to prove in court otherwise.
LCD I get but why would Nokia or AT&T sue CRT makers? Although, I would love to see a CRT in a nice steampunk phone. or KIRF