Feb. 28 (Bloomberg) -- Sharp Corp. and a Hitachi Ltd. display unit said they were probed by Japan's antitrust regulator, after Kyodo News reported the companies were raided on suspicion of price-fixing for liquid-crystal displays used in game players.

The Fair Trade Commission searched offices and outlets of the companies today, Kyodo News reported, without saying where it obtained the information. The LCDs were used in Nintendo Co.'s DS game player, Kyodo said.

Akinori Shibuya, a spokesman at Osaka-based Sharp, Japan's largest liquid-crystal display maker, and Hitachi Displays Ltd.'s Tokyo-based spokesman Masayuki Ishibashi declined to comment beyond saying their respective companies were under investigation. Nintendo spokesman Yasuhiro Minagawa said he couldn't immediately comment on the report. Toshiyuki Nambu, an official at the commission, wasn't immediately available.

Under Japanese fair-trade regulations, any manufacturer found guilty of price fixing can be fined as much as 10 percent of gains deemed to have been obtained illegally.

The handheld DS was the best-selling video-game system in the U.S. last year, with almost 8.5 million sets sold, Nintendo said on Jan. 17, citing data from researcher NPD Group Inc.

Sharp fell 3.1 percent to 1,976 yen at the close on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, while Hitachi dropped 2.3 percent to 779 yen. The benchmark Nikkei 225 Stock Average declined 0.8 percent.

Global shipments of liquid-crystal displays measuring less than 10 inches will increase 6 percent to 4.06 billion units this year, researcher iSuppli Corp. said in October. Sales of such displays rose 5 percent to $18.8 billion last year, according to Dublin-based Research and Markets.

To contact the reporter on this story: Pavel Alpeyev in Tokyo at palpeyev@bloomberg.net; Yoshinori Eki in Tokyo at yeki@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: February 28, 2008 02:15 EST