Samsung's flash plant quickly back in action

Stephen Withers
Tuesday, 07 August 2007 03:42

Your IT - Home IT

The effects of the power shortage that shut down Samsung's flash memory production lines were not as bad as originally feared.

The lines were running again within 24 hours, and a proportion of the work in progress was salvageable. Samsung estimated the damage caused by the power problem was in excess of $US40 million.

As Samsung holds around half of the flash market, news of the problem led to fears of parts shortages and increased prices, in turn driving down the share prices of major customers such as Apple (which uses the chips in iPods and iPhones), and boosting the stocks of other flash manufacturers.

When news of the incident broke, some analysts predicted that as much as a month's production could be lost, but it turned out that the situation was nowhere near as dire as they feared. Samsung expects its quarterly production figures will be unaffected by the temporary closure of the lines.