Japan disaster causes chip price increase

The terrible damage to Japan plants and infrastructure caused by the earthquake and tsunami threatens to disrupt the global manufacturing chain longer than many had expected.

Many Japanese firms are keeping their plants closed while the extensive damage will take months to repair. Due to this many global companies are looking for alternative sources of high tech components.

IHS Suppli said the earthquake and its aftermath will result in shortages of some electronic parts and could even lead to price increases.

“While there are few reports of actual damage at electronic production facilities, impacts on the transportation and power infrastructure will result in disruptions of supply, resulting in the short supply and rising prices. Components impacted will include NAND flash memory, dynamic random access memory (DRAM), microcontrollers, standard logic, liquid-crystal display (LCD) panels, and LCD parts and materials.”

The repair bill for the disaster is said to be in excess of £100 billion.

NAND flash chip prices have risen almost 3 percent after a 20 percent jump on Monday, while DRAM memory chip prices gained 0.2 percent on top of a 7 percent on Monday. This was confirmed with DRAMeXchange.

Japan is one fifth of the worlds semiconductor production, including 40 percent of flash memory chips used in all devices from smartphones to computers and tablets.

KitGuru says: Japan are such an integral part of the infrastructure. Long term repercussions are yet to be known.

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