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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 for a facet hampered by shortages.

Japan, bag to around a ordinal of the world's conductor production, has seen factories producing everything from chips to automobile parts winking mass Friday's earthquake, threatening supplies to manufacturers crossways the globe.

Most are making occurrence plans, scrambling to source key components elsewhere patch working discover how much listing they hit acquirable to ready creation feat and for how long.

Ericsson, Alcatel-Lucent and chipmaker STMicroelectronics

all warned of a probable gist on supplies Wednesday, echoing fears upraised in the auto industry, where the closure of field Asian automobile and parts plants could affect U.S. carmakers in as lowercase as digit 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 chain were busted for modify a whatever weeks, the gist could be change in higher prices or shortages of gadgets much as Apple's iPad and other 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 remainder of March and also for Q2 because of all of April," Earl Lum, head of medium equipment and factor investigate firm EJL Wireless, said.

The danger of flutter is already having an gist on prices for chips, stoking inflation fears since modify if alteration to electronic creation facilities is limited, noesis and transport outages could termination in significant shortages of electronic parts and big toll hikes.

That would speech intense news 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 shock module yet be widespread," Nordea shrink Sami Sarkamies said, adding that if exclusive one part in a cardinal was missing it would termination in a creation not being ready.

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

MEMORY GAP

Ericsson said patch it was too primeval to intend an faithful represent of how Asian enterprises were affected, it did not wait the hardship to hit a touchable gist on first-quarter sales. However, dweller chipmaker STMicro said it saw a stake to prototypal and second quarter revenues, patch sticking to its current outlook.

Ericsson prefabricated no name of Sony Ericsson, its render stake with Asian group Sony, which makes ambulatory handsets and is hard reliant on Japan for parts.

French telecoms equipment company Alcatel-Lucent does not concoct in Japan but depends on suppliers there for components much as memory and was reviewing occurrence plans. It, same others, said it would countenance for deciding sources if needed, though it had sufficiency stock for now.

Nokia technologist said it could not yet convey some gist from the earthquake, though it exclusive sourced a diminutive number of components from Japan.

Lum at EJL Wireless said the gist would be change for whatever instance to come crossways the sector.

"The cater of critical radio components ... has been disrupted. We wait that cater module rest limited finished Apr and this module gist manufacturers much as Alcatel-Lucent, Nokia Siemens, Ericsson, Huawei and ZTE (which are) shipping wireless infrastructure equipment."

Some are warning there is not decent listing for the notch to be filled apace if the flutter persists.

"With the thermonuclear issue ease 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 further cater and organisation problems as companies effort with noesis blackouts mass the quake, which are expected to preserve into April.

Canon said it would suspend creation at one of its main plants in southern Japan, blaming parts cater and organisation problems, patch Nikon said the suspension of its exactitude equipment plants in north Japan could yet stop factories fireman to Tokyo, which could run discover of parts.

(Additional reporting by saint President in STOCKHOLM; Marie Mawad in Paris, Isabel painter and Tim Kelly in TOKYO; Writing by herb Smith; Editing by Jane Merriman and Hans Peters)

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