Electronics prices to see an uptick

[bellinghman]

We get used to the price of silicon semiconductor products generally declining. But much of the reason for that is that supply usually meets demand, and actual cost of production is being tightly controlled by ever newer and more efficient plant. Right now, that may not be the case: this article in Information Week notes that two of the factories that make silicon wafers (from which RAM and CPUs and so on ultimately are made) have been shut down during the aftermath of the Sendai quake.

Those two factories produce something like 25% of the raw wafers for the industry. And you can't build new factories easily - they're hugely expensive affairs by dint of having to be the cleanest places on the planet.

So supply of the basic feedstock for the later stages has just been squeezed, whereas demand is almost untouched.

Expect prices to rise for a bit, if these factories stay offline for very long.