To take advantage they'd have to do some form of price fixing which in most places is a very big footgun.

I honestly don't think they need to fix their prices, and it's possible that selling to consumers is a secondary market for them compared to datacenters, like Nvidia selling GPUs to gamers. We know that's not where the money is.

Seeing some companies actually exit the consumer market is evidence for this.

> To take advantage they'd have to do some form of price fixing which in most places is a very big footgun.

When parent commenter says "They have done this in the past after all" that's exactly what they're talking about. Micron, Samsung, Hyinx (prior to SK Group acquisition), and others all participated in RAM price fixing in the early 2000's.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DRAM_industry_price_fixing

If it's a highly profitable footgun why not?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DRAM_industry_price_fixing#202...

If something is illegal, and the punishment is a fine, it's not illegal it just has a cost.

Is it worth the cost? Yup.

Just to be clear the big Memory giants are famous for their price fixing historically speaking.