Japan

[Vultch]

I would guess all of our (the forums) best wishes and concerns go to the Japanese people in their time of trouble...

An interesting thread has developed on a camera forum I'm on, Japanese industry has ground to a halt, indeed Panasonic whose camera factories escaped damage have shut down and cant yet give a restart date, Sony are in a similar situation and certain professional video cameras are now going up in price.
I wonder how their car industry Lexus etc are coping and how prices of any Japanese technology will be affected.

[Rustinho]

I would guess all of our (the forums) best wishes and concerns go to the Japanese people in their time of trouble...

An interesting thread has developed on a camera forum I'm on, Japanese industry has ground to a halt, indeed Panasonic whose camera factories escaped damage have shut down and cant yet give a restart date, Sony are in a similar situation and certain professional video cameras are now going up in price.
I wonder how their car industry Lexus etc are coping and how prices of any Japanese technology will be affected.

I was watching a bit of the business news the other day (can't remember which channel it was on) and they were quoting how much per day it's costing the Japanese car companies to keep their factories shut during the current crisis and it was bazillions per day.

The 3 companies quoted were Toyota, Honda and... erm... another one.

I guess to some extent (particularly with cars) competition will keep prices low but I remember after the Kobe earthquake the price/availability of memory chips for computers was seriously affected.