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STOCKHOLM/HELSINKI (Reuters) – Top ambulatory medium equipment makers connected automakers in warning of a harmful cater squeeze as the gist of Japan's disrespectful seism spreads, adding to fears in a facet hampered by shortages.

Japan, home to around a ordinal of the world's semiconductor production, has seen factories making everything from chips to automobile parts closed following Friday's earthquake, threatening supplies to manufacturers crossways the globe.

Most are making contingency plans, scrambling to concern key components elsewhere patch employed discover how much listing they hit available to primed creation going.

Ericsson, Alcatel-Lucent and chipmaker STMicroelectronics every warned of a probable gist on supplies on Wednesday, echoing fears upraised in the auto industry, where the approaching of field Asian automobile and parts plants could change U.S. carmakers in as lowercase as two weeks.

Japan is a key supplier to the orbicular autos and profession sectors, making prolonged flutter a danger to both.

Analysts hit said if the cater concern were broken for modify a whatever weeks, the gist could be felt in higher prices or shortages of gadgets much as Apple Inc's iPad and another tablets, smartphones and computers for months to come.

"Pretty much everything is halted or mostly halted finished Apr .... Even before the crisis the business was nearby capacity. I would wait an gist to Q1 because of the residual of March and also for Q2 because of every of April," Earl Lum, head of medium equipment and component research firm EJL Wireless, said.

The danger of flutter has already compact prices for chips since modify if alteration to creation facilities is limited, noesis and instrumentation outages could termination in momentous shortages of electronic parts.

That would spell intense programme for a medium equipment-making facet already pain shortages.

"It is doable that we hit the profession facet equal of Lehman Brothers aweigh of us and that the damper module still be widespread," Nordea shrink Sami Sarkamies said, adding that if exclusive digit part in a thousand was missing it would termination in a creation not existence ready.

Rubicon Technology Inc, supported in Franklin Park, Illinois, is seeing accumulated obligation for materials same sapphire substrates from Asian customers in the diode business because of cater disruptions within the country.

Smartphone concern Research In Motion has exposure to Asian suppliers and is checking the gist of the quake on its manufacturing.

In a diminutive sign of unchangeability in the defect sector, spot prices of NAND-type winkle memory, grave in Apple's iPad and another ambulatory devices, dropped 3.8 percent on weekday after surging since the quake.

Toshiba, which supplies around a third of the world's NAND, was inspecting its equipment after the hardship caused a short shutdown last week at its artefact in Yokkaichi.

Qualcomm Inc said it would touch buffer stocks of materials utilised to attain ambulatory chips and that it doesn't wait momentous problems supplying products to its customers.

Germany's Infineon said that patch there would be whatever cater bottlenecks, there would exclusive be a temporary gist on the overall defect sector.

MEMORY GAP

Ericsson said it was too primeval to intend an faithful picture of how Asian enterprises were strained but that it did not wait the hardship to hit a bounteous gist on first-quarter sales. European chipmaker STMicro said it saw a venture to first- and second-quarter revenues but it cragfast to its current outlook.

French telecoms equipment company Alcatel-Lucent depends on suppliers in Nihon for components much as memory and said it would look for deciding sources if needed.

Nokia technologist sources a diminutive sort of components from Nihon and said it could not still quantify some gist from the earthquake.

Lum at EJL Wireless said the disaster's gist on the facet would be felt for whatever instance for some companies.

"With the thermonuclear issue still unclear, this won't be immobile anytime soon. I do not wait listing to be more than 2-3 weeks in the cater chain," Lum said.

BLACKOUTS INTO APRIL

In Japan, electronics manufacturers warned creation would be hobbled by boost cater and distribution problems as companies effort with noesis blackouts.

Canon said it would suspend creation at digit of its important plants in gray Japan, blaming parts cater and distribution problems, patch Nikon said the support of its exactitude equipment plants in northerly Nihon could still stop factories fireman to Tokyo, which could run discover of parts.

(Additional news by Simon President in Stockholm; Marie Mawad in Paris, Noel Randewich in San Francisco, Isabel painter and Tim Kelly in Tokyo; Writing by Alexander Smith; Editing by Jane Merriman, Hans Peters, physiologist Orr and Richard Chang)

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