The Influence Of Earthquake in Japan On Chip Industry

Published:2011/3/16 4:20:00 Author:LiuQiaoyan From:SeekIC

Japan is a dominant player in chip industry, producing about one-fifth of the global semiconductors. After the earthquake, many Japanese companies from automakers to electronics firms and component makers are keeping their plants shut down. The supply shortage caused by the quake made the prices of key technology parts raised. If the supply chain can not be recovered within a few weeks, problems like higher prices and shortage of gadgets like computers, tablets and smart phones will emerge in the next few months. Even if electronic production facilities did not damaged badly, the break down of power and transport could also lead to rapid price increases and lack of electronic parts.
The earthquake also have impact on the NAND flash memory chips,which are used in the rapid developed mobile devices market, DRAM, standard logic, LCD panel and LCD parts. According to the price tracker DRAMeXchange, the spot prices of NAND flash chips increased about 20 percent on Monday and raised another 3 percent on Tuesday. The world’s largest DRAM and NAND memory supplier Kingston Technology said that the reaction of some market is a kind of speculative nature, but also added that it is reasonable to worry about the disruption may spread to other manufacturers outside Japan. The process of semiconductor production often takes several weeks, and any temporary stop in the process would destroy it and everything has to be discarded as junk. Even if the disruption only last for two weeks, the trouble of deficiencies and the price impact would not go until the third quarter.
Owing to some mobile devices and tablets, the demand for NAND flash memory chips has been surging. Especially the iPad2, whose sales are estimated almost 1 million units. Experts said that the mobile phone industry has been suffering from lack of component, and the situation takes no favourable turn recently. The prices of components will rise continuously.
Apple Inc said it delayed the launch of iPad2 in Japan on Tuesday after the disaster, but it did not say clearly whether it was because of the supply problems. Analysts said that Apple has managed its supply chain well and any rivals who want to come into the tablet market competing with Apple, be careful,that may not as easy as they thought.
Toshiba Corp, which supplies about one-third of the NAND flash memory chips in the world, said it was still inspecting the factory that produces microprocessors and image sensors in Iwate. The factory was suspend due to the quake and tsunami and the company was not sure when it can rerun again. The related integrated circuit is 17511A.

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