iSuppli Warns of Component Shortage Following Japanese Earthquake

Posted 03/15/2011 at 7:12am | by Paul Lilly

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Market research firm iSuppli says the Japan earthquake and tsunami could impact component supply and pricing with "significant shortages" of some parts, causing pricing to "increase dramatically." There haven't been many reports of damage at production facilities, and the reason we could see a short supply of devices and rising prices is because of the impact on transportation and power infrastructure.

Components to keep an eye on include NAND flash memory, DRAM products, microcontrollers, standard logic, LCD panels, and LCD parts and materials. Potentially just the tip of the iceberg, iSuppli says Japan is the world's largest supplier of silicon used to make semiconductor chips, and if supply is disrupted, it could affect even more products, like MOSFETs, bipolar transistors, small signal transistors, and other discretes.

Shortages haven't actually occurred yet, though both iSuppli and DigiTimes note that memory spot prices have been soaring since the earthquake and tsunami struck. According to DigiTimes, spot market prices for mainstream MLC NAND flash, which is used in many consumer solid state drives, jumped 20 percent in one day, while spot prices for DDR3 chips went up 7 percent.