Reply to post: Re: So let me see if I've got this right.

HP scores $176m win in CD-ROM drive price-fix case – after one biz emailed rival with 'Price Fixing' as the subject

2Nick3

Re: So let me see if I've got this right.

Exactly - it's doubtful the price increase was extended to the customer. We are looking at commodity drives here, so the price increase was probably pretty low - if the price was overly-inflated someone would have noticed ("Gee, I can get that same drive cheaper at Best Buy!"). So if the supplier can get an extra $0.50 a drive, on a million drives, they net $500k, but since the consumer unit sales price is still going to be rounded up to the next $9.99 the increase was absorbed at that point by HP. And HP isn't going to change the number of drives they are ordering because of this, so it's pretty lucrative for the suppliers.

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