HP assessing Japan earthquake impact

BANGALORE (Reuters) - Hewlett-Packard Co <HPQ.N> said on Tuesday it is assessing the impact to its business of the earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan earlier this month and that its office in Sendai, near the quake's epicenter, remains closed.

None of its offices in the Tokyo metropolitan area sustained major structural damage, the computer maker said in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. It also said that all its employees are safe.

HP said it gets components used to manufacture some of its products from suppliers with operations in Japan, and that revenue from Japan historically has accounted for 3 percent to 4 percent of its revenue.

Those components include LaserJet printer engines and toner, which it gets from a partner with manufacturing facilities in Japan, HP said.

The 9.0-magnitude earthquake and the tsunami that followed left at least 21,000 people dead or missing.

"The crisis in Japan is already impacting component prices and the importance of Japan for the memory market will be a worry," said Canalys PC analyst Tim Coulling.

"Though production has increasingly been outsourced to China, South Korea and other lower-cost markets, there are over 40 factories in Japan producing a significant proportion of the world's PC and smart phone components," he said.

Absent workers, power outages and transportation infrastructure damage will hinder distribution, he added.

(Reporting by Robert MacMillan in Bangalore and Tarmo Virki in Helsinki. Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty)