consolidation of key suppliers; failure of a key supplier's business process; a key supplier's or sub-supplier's inability to access credit necessary to operate its business; or failure of a key supplier to remain in business, to remain an independent merchant supplier, or to adjust to used in the storage industry, may negatively impact our operating results. NAND flash, or commodity materials such as glass substrates, stainless steel, aluminum, nickel, neodymium, ruthe- nium, platinum or cerium, may increase our costs and may result in lower operating margins if we are unable to find ways to mitigate these increased costs. We or our suppliers acquire certain precious metals and rare earth metals like ruthenium, platinum, neodymium and cerium, which are critical to the manufacture of components in our products from a number of countries, including the People's Republic of China. The government of China or any other nation may impose regulations, quotas or embargoes upon these metals that would restrict the worldwide supply of such metals and/or increase their cost, both of which could negatively impact our operating results until alternative suppli- ers are sourced. Furthermore, if other high volume industries increase their demand for materials or components used in our products, our costs may further increase, which could have an adverse effect on our operating margins. In addi- tion, shortages in other commodity components and materials used in our customers' products could result in a decrease in demand for our products, which would negatively impact our operating results. The volatility in the cost of oil also affects our costs and may result in lower operating margins if we are unable to pass these increased costs on to our customers. components or may cause us to have inadequate or excess component inventory. in our component needs. In addition, we may from time to time enter into contractual commitments with component suppliers in an effort to increase and stabilize the supply of those components and enable us to purchase such compo- nents at favorable prices. Some of these commitments may require us to buy a substantial number of components from the supplier or make significant cash advances to the supplier; however, these commitments may not result in a sat- isfactory increase or stabilization of the supply of such components. Furthermore, as a result of uncertain global eco- nomic conditions, our ability to forecast our requirements for these components has become increasingly difficult, therefore increasing the risk that our contractual commitments may not meet our actual supply requirements, which could cause us to have inadequate or excess component inventory and adversely affect our operating results and increase our operating costs. for our products may adversely affect our operations. technology and equipment necessary for advanced development technology for future products. Some of these compo- nents, and most of this technology and production equipment, must be specifically designed to be compatible for use in our products or for developing and manufacturing our future products, and are only available from a limited num- ber of suppliers, some of with whom we are sole sourced. We are therefore dependent on these suppliers to be able and willing to dedicate adequate engineering resources to develop components that can be successfully integrated with our |