Earlier this month a power outage in one of Samsung's manufacturing plants took down six chip production lines, forcing the world's largest flash memory producer, to ramp up its chip production to meet targets.
Samsung rejected worries about a flash memory shortage prompted by the power outage claiming that they had maintained stockpiles of chips for their main clients. However, if statements from PQI general manager Jance Lu are to be believed, Samsung is only going to meet 85% of its NAND flash deliveries in the second half of August.
Lu estimated that Samsung's fab blackout will affect overall NAND flash supply by about 3%, followed by a sharp increase in prices due to soaring demand. Nevertheless, she noted that NAND flash price should stabilize towards the end of the year, when the seasonal upturn ends and cheaper NAND flash begins to be made on new processes.
While the PQI manager did not name the affected customers, one of the largest of these is expected to be Apple. With NAND memory from Samsung being used in both iPhones and iPods, the shortage could hurt the company's margins for its next quarter.