SAN FRANCISCO, USA - World's leading handset manufacturer Nokia has filed a lawsuit against a cartel of  liquid crystal display panel manufacturers, which includes Sharp, LG, Chunghwa Picture Tubes and their subsidiaries.

In a complaint filed with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in San Francisco, the Finnish electronics giant has alleged the cartel of "price-fixing" and follows up on the slew of lawsuits being filed up against LCD panel manufacturers.

In a recent court ruling, LG and Sharp pleaded guilty of price-fixing in a case filed by the US Department of Justice, following which LG was fined US$400 million for conspiring to fix prices during September 2001 to June 2006, while another leading LCD panel manufacturer, Sharp, was fined US$120 million for overcharging LCD panels sold to Dell, Motorola and Apple during the same time frame.

As LCD panels are a basic component of most electronics devices today, the price fixing scandal is bound to generate heated reactions from most electronics' manufacturers. With handphones being one of the largest consumers of LCD panels, an increasing number of handset manufacturers are now suing the LCD panel cartel. AT&T filed a lawsuit in San Francisco in October this year alleging Samsung, LG and other LCD panel manufacturers of price=fixing of 300 million handsets which the carrier bought from different manufacturers. With Nokia now filing the lawsuit, the handset industry seems to be the worst hit by the price-fixing scandal. The world's second and third largest handset manufacturers are surprisingly missing from the list as both LG and Samsung have been involved in the alleged price fixing.

While  manufacturers may manage to get some compensation from the fines imposed by court, whether end-users who were forced to buy the electronic devices at inflated prices will get any compensation remains to be seen.