The two flash market leaders, Samsung with 37% market share, and Toshiba with 34.5% market share, have confirmed that they have been informed by the US Department of Justice (DoJ) that the two-year investigation has been dropped.

Hitachi, which has a share in Renesas Technology which was in the flash business, says it heard from the DoJ in July that the investigations were being dropped.

Other companies involved in the flash market are SanDisk, Intel, STMicroelectronics, Numonyx - the Intel-ST flash joint venture - Micron Technology. IM Flash - the Intel-Micron joint venture, and the Flash Alliance - the Toshiba-SanDisk joint venture.

Although SanDisk is known to have received a subpoena from the DoJ, it is not known whether the other companies have been involved in the investigation.

The DoJ found price-fixing in the DRAM market in 2006 fining Samsung, Elpida, Micron, Hynix and Infineon over $730m, and sending six Samsung executives, four Infineon executives, four Hynix executives and an Elpida executive to jail.