Sun Microsystems Inc is suffering from memory chip shortages because its chief supplier, Mitsubishi Electric Corp, is having yield problems. The problem started to hit on systems availability back some weeks ago. Sun believes that it is just beginning to get a handle on the situation now. Wall Street, however, does not share in this confidence, and frets that it could drag down margins and revenues in Sun’s end-of-the-year June quarter. Prices on the DRAM grey market are beginning to rise and Sun is now charging more for extra memory in an attempt to bring them up to street prices. This move should cover Sun since the contracts that the company has with its multiple memory chip sources are fixed-price long-term agreements that ignore the market.
