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The newspaper, citing an official with the National Development
and Reform Commission's Pricing Supervision Department, said the
NDRC was alerted to the situation after a sharp rise in the
price of chips over the last 18 months.
"We have noticed the price surge and will pay more attention to
future problems that may be caused by 'price fixing' in the
sector," the official Xu Xinyu was quoted as saying.
The newspaper added that the official referred to possible
coordinated action taken by a number of firms to gain maximum
profits by pushing the price of the product as high as possible.
A "super-cycle" of tight supply and soaring demand for memory
chips, which power servers and smartphones, has been driving up
prices and profits at chipmakers such as Samsung Electronics Co
Ltd and SK Hynix Inc which control the lion's share of the
global market.
The NDRC has spoken to Samsung, the China Daily reported, citing
Wang Yanhui, the secretary-general of the Mobile China Alliance,
who the paper said had knowledge of the matter. The paper did
not provide further details.
Mobile China Alliance is an industry association that has more
than 30 mobile phone companies as members.
Wang said it was too early to predict what further measures
could be taken but that the government could look at penalties
issued by other countries if makers were found to be engaging in
such any price fixing.
Samsung and SK Hynix declined to comment.
Chinese firms have the capability to produce traditional 2D NAND
chips, but analysts said the technology transfer needed for such
firms to produce the more premium 3D NAND chips made by the
likes of Samsung is taking longer than expected.
This, along with demand from fast-growing Chinese smartphone
makers such as Xiaomi and Oppo, has caused the average spot
price for mainstream DRAM chips to surge by more than half over
the past one year while prices for NAND flash chips rose 32
percent, according to research firm TrendForce.
"China is the biggest smartphone manufacturer ... so of course
China wants to pay more attention and play a more important role
in the whole industry," said Hattie He, Shanghai-based analyst
at research firm Canalys.
"Memory is one of the key components for smartphones so it makes
sense that Chinese vendors want to have more capabilities to
control these components," she said.
(Reporting by Brenda Goh; Additional Reporting by Joyce Lee and
Cate Cadell; Editing by Himani Sarkar and Christopher Cushing)
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