Let’s play the Extrapolation game.

It’s a simple game really. Simply read two independent and interesting articles, draw a line between them (figuratively please) and then prognosticate what that may mean in the future. For example, in the Wall Street Journal I read an article about how a power failure of only 0.07 seconds in Japan will affect the supply of NAND memory chips, used as solid state storage in iPads, iPhones and the like.

Then, I read a story about Paju South Korea, a city that abuts the DMZ separating North from South Korea. One of South Korea’s fastest growing cities with roughly 20,000 new residents in the past year, Paju is home to a $7 billion LCD manufacturing facility of LG Display Company. The $7 billion plant is only a few miles from the DMZ. And despite the trouble with North Korea, the company is building a second equally massive plant.

Now, let’s join the two stories. I think they highlight the great risks to the electronics industry – systematic risks such as very-short duration power failures and military-induced uncertainty. How these might affect supplies and short term market prices for certain electronics could be interesting.

The power failure article quotes iSupply as saying that this may affect prices in January, but certainly not for the whole year.

Would the same effect happen if LG’s LCD plants were off line as a result of an artillery barrage such as happened on Yeonpyeong Island on November 23, 2010?

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