Investors, semi-conductor manufacturers and IT equipment makers are trying to assess the impact of this week's Taiwanese earthquake on the highly volatile chip market.
Taiwan chipmakers account for 6 or 7 per cent of the world D-ram market, but their share could rise to 12 per cent when outsourcing to Japanese chipmakers, mainly Toshiba is taken into account. Taiwan also makes many of the motherboards which form the guts of a PC.
Although the island's big chip makers, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing and United Microelectronics, say their factories have not been damaged by the earthquake, analysts said the violent shaking was likely to prevent them restarting output for some weeks.
This could lead to shortages of 64-megabit dynamic random access memory (D-Ram) chips in the spot market, where prices had already jumped from a low of $4 in May to about $12 in recent weeks.
Mr Jon Chong-hwa, electronics analyst at Salomon Smith Barney, predicted that the prices of 64Mb D-Ram chips could rise from the current $12 (€11.13) per unit to $15 because it would take time to recalibrate sensitive chip-making equipment, although power and water supplies are expected to resume soon.
Shares in Hitachi and NEC, two of Japan's leading D-Ram makers, jumped sharply in Tokyo trading. Hitachi was the most heavily traded stock in the market. NEC was also heavily bought.
In Seoul, the reaction was stronger; Hyundai Electronics jumped by 13 per cent, with others such as Hyundai Microelectronics and Samsung Electronics making considerable gains. Samsung sells only a small proportion of its output on the spot market - about 5 per cent - compared with about 20 per cent for the Hyundai companies.
In Europe shares in the three main semi-conductor groups also rose in response to the quake.
Nevertheless, most large companies outside Taiwan, including Intel, the world's largest chip manufacturer, said it was too early to assess the effect of the earthquake on chip and other component supplies.
"If there are problems with memory production, that may result in firming prices, but it is too early to say if that's the case, said Mr Steve Roberts of Intel.
Intel does not produce D-Ram chips - the main sector analysts saw as potentially hit by the earthquake. But it has customers in Taiwan and acknowledged that the supply of other personal computer components could be disrupted.
Japanese companies, which have invested heavily in Taiwan, were also trying to assess the loss to employees and damage to facilities. The task was made difficult by the apparent collapse of much of the island's telecommunications equipment.
Seiko Epson, the manufacturer of personal computers and peripherals, particularly liquid crystal displays, said its 21 Japanese employees were safe, but the fate of its 1,000 Taiwanese workers remained uncertain.
