Samsung’s flash memory production is back on track, after an outage caused disruptions on five production lines.
According to a Reuters report, the plant near Seoul was back in operation midday Saturday and Samsung expected total damage from the incident to be about $43 million, smaller than an earlier estimate. Some analysts had feared the outage could wipe out a month’s worth of flash supply from the number-one maker of NAND flash memory, sending prices skyrocketing.
The outage was bad news for Samsung, but good for competitors such as SanDisk (SNDK), Micron Technology (MU) and Intel
(INTC), who stood to see their profit margins improve on the flash they were able to bring to market.
Apple (AAPL), a major Samsung customer for the flash that handles storage for iPods and iPhones, now seems unlikely to suffer the supply-related constraints some feared yesterday.