After-shocks
As anyone who has been following the consequences of the earthquake off the coast of Japan will know, the situation is constantly evolving, and the true extent of the natural disaster only gradually becoming clear.
The same is true of its effect on business, but with Japan being a key player in the global technology business, we've attempted to provide a snapshot of the effect on the channel at time of writing.
The tech giant most profoundly affected by the quake appears to be Toshiba, although none of its tech plants seem to have been physically damaged by the quake. In an announcement on Monday Toshiba announced it was cutting the electricity consumption of all businesses within the Tokyo Electric Power Company's (TEPCO) territory to bare essential level.
In practice this is most profoundly affecting the production of Flash memory, and the spot price of NAND Flash and Flash cards spiked by over 20 percent earlier this week. The good news is that things seem to have stabilised as more information became available.
Having said Tosh seems to be the worst hit, plenty of other players have plants in the affected area. EETimes wrote a comprehensive analysis of fabs affected by the quake on Monday, which included the graphic from Objective Analysis that we've reproduced below. Other heavily impacted tech companies include Renesas, Texas Instruments and Freescale.
Meanwhile Reuters and Business Insider confirmed NAND Flash seems to be the worst affected and, perhaps inevitably, focused on what all this means for supplied of Apple's iPad 2.
