Electronics
giant Samsung’s important NAND Flash
memory chip factory in South Korea was shut
down for almost two days Friday and Saturday,
after an electrical issue caused a power
outage there.
The
exact cause of the problem isn’t clear,
but reports are that a spark in a transformer
caused power to be lost near Samsung's huge
chip manufacturing complex in South Korea.
Samsung is the world’s largest manufacturing
of DRAM (dynamic RAM) memory chips, which
are used mainly in PCs, and NAND flash memory
chips, which are used in portable devices,
such as Apple’s IPOD.
In
fact, as news of the problem reached the
financial markets, Apple’s stock fell
more than 3%, in part, it appears, over
fears a shortage of available NAND memory
chips would cause supply shortages of Apple’s
iPOD and iPhone products available for sale.
Samsung
originally said the plant would be down
for two days, but reported it was up by
mid-day on Saturday, a bit earlier than
originally expected. The plant has six NAND
memory production lines, which the company
said all were back in action.
Samsung
now estimates the cost of the disruption
at about $43 million, though it says total
chip production for the third quarter will
not be impacted. The company did not specify
how it would catch up for the lost volume. |