Okay, da's op zich geen nieuws, maar News.com heeft wat concrete info over de problemen die als gevolg van de aarbeving zijn ontstaan:
The biggest trouble area is notebooks, which already face display shortages, analysts said."You're looking at the equivalence of four to eight weeks of lost production," said Danny Lam, a principal at Fisher-Holstein, a technology consulting firm.
That means supply shortages, starting in early November, of critical chipsets, graphics accelerators, and other components, analysts said.
ATI Technologies and other graphic card makers responded to the shortage by raising prices, which PC makers will have to absorb or pass onto consumers.
CD-ROM drives are another trouble spot, because a controller chip is not available, according to industry bulletins from the Taipei Computer Association, a trade and information group covering the island and the industry.
Taiwan accounts for about 44 percent of CD-ROM production, according to TCA, which anticipates serious drive shortages because of the quake. CD-ROM prices had already spiked 10 percent following the quake.
The quake also affected the availability of CD-R and CD-RW drives, which were already in short supply due to increased demand.
By itself, the Taiwan crisis might be manageable, but an unexpected shortage of DRAM chips complicates an already difficult situation.
C|Net verwacht dat de produktietekorten mogelijk eind dit jaar (tijdens de holiday sales) voor een prijsverhoging (ipv verlaging) van PC's gaan zorgen.
