PC shipments could drop 10% due to hard drive shortages

[DainBramaged]

The widespread flooding in Thailand that disrupted operations at hard disk drive factories will lead to significantly declining PC shipments, say market analysts. Thailand accounted for 40 to 45 percent of worldwide HDD production in the first half of 2011, but flooding has impacted more than a dozen factories, according to IDC.

Much of the PC production for the fourth quarter of 2011 occurred before the flooding, or can be completed with existing drive inventory. But overall PC production will still decline this quarter and drop even further in the beginning of 2012, with normal operations not expected to return until the second half of next year, IDC said. "PC shipments will decline between 2.2 percent and 3.4 percent in the fourth quarter from a year earlier, down from a prior forecast for 5.1 percent growth," Bloomberg reported, quoting IDC numbers. "In the first quarter, shipments may drop by 1.8 percent to 13.4 percent. IDC had projected a gain of 8.2 percent."

Goldman Sachs is also projecting PC shipment declines of 3 percent year-over-year in the current quarter, and an 8.5 percent drop in the first quarter of 2012, according to Bloomberg. Goldman Sachs further said Microsoft's profit and sales will decline because fewer Windows PCs will be sold. IDC noted that hard drive prices are rising "as demand exceeds supply and manufacturers face increased costs for components, expedited shipments, and shifting of production to new locations." Pricing won't stabilize until June.

The smaller hardware vendors are likely to lose out. "In response to the crisis, priority will be given to the large PC manufacturers that drive HDD shipment volumes as well as to the high-margin products used in enterprise servers and storage," IDC research vice president John Rydning said in a press release. In the PC category, the biggest impacts will be on emerging markets, netbooks and entry-level consumer PCs.

http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2011/11/pc-shipments-could-drop-more-than-10-over-hard-drive-shortages.ars

[HopeHoops]

1. Fuck it - solid state drives are going to take over anyway and they are a SHITLOAD faster.

They also don't weigh much or suffer from shock damage while "spinning". I've got a mini with a 7 1/2" screen that I can easily hold in one hand - solid state drive, Linux, more than enough memory, and a battery life that is amazing. This "shortage" could be a good thing. It might hasten the switch to full solid state for home machines.

[Posteritatis]

3. It'll take awhile before terabyte-scale SSDs that have reasonable prices show up, though. (nt)

[HopeHoops]

6. It won't take that long. You can get a 32GB stick for $20 (on sale).

I've got something like a 250GB SSD with 16GB of memory in my mini. The whole damn thing was less than $500. I've got six 1TB externals hanging off my main machine and another 8 near TB drives that I use with the laptop on an as-needed basis. There are a couple that I use for archives and don't keep on immediate access storage. yeah, $100 for 1TB may be a little ways off, but perhaps this will give them some incentive. One thing's for sure - you can cram a shitload more SS in the same size package as a HD.

[DainBramaged]

13. You could buy 1TB 3.5 disk drives on sale from Newegg for less than $100

I have a WD as my back up. All of my systems at work have 1TB from Dell.

[HopeHoops]

16. I like Seagate. They've served me well. WD used to be my favorite, but I had some physical failure

I sort of lost confidence in them. The Seagates are hammered pretty hard every day and still keep going. Nice cases too (vanity showing through).

[FarCenter]

19. Production of 2.5" laptop drives is hit harder than 3.5" drives

[Bosonic]

7. Also a shitload more expensive per GB

Even taking into account the sharp price rises in coventional drives.

Good for a boot drive, not such a good idea for data storage unless you're Richie Rich.

[DainBramaged]

8. :) Me too

Acer netbook, OCZ 60GB SDD, Windows 7, 2 GB ram, from power on to ddesktop in 20 seconds or less.

[HopeHoops]

11. Well, that's fast for Win 7, but mine is up from scratch in about 4 seconds (tops).

Damn I love Linux. This Vista box takes a good five minutes to stabilize after a full shutdown. It's getting older and has a lot of shit installed on it, but Jesus.

[DainBramaged]

14. My next project is my gaming system with an SSD boot drive

and a nice raid array.........

PS I'm happy with 20 seconds, life is too short anyway.


:evilgrin:

[HopeHoops]

15. I've worked with some pretty fucking huge arrays (at least for the time)

I can help with setup, like striping and controller/drive redundancy and recovery. It isn't as simple as they want you to believe, but you can make a RAID array fully failure-resistant.

[DainBramaged]

17. One day we'll have to meet up with SalmonEnchantedEvening and swap drives....

:rofl:

Been building systems for him for a while, one of the best here.


I'm happy when my shit turns on in the morning......

[HopeHoops]

18. Sounds kinky. I leave my systems up 24x7. They have auto-sleep functions.

I hate waiting for a fucking system to boot. The mini is right over the side of the bed. I do most of my writing on that.

[PoliticAverse]

2. Pictures of Western Digital's flooded plant...

http://www.brightsideofnews.com/news/2011/11/1/photo-horrific-images-of-flooded-western-digital-factory.aspx

[Fumesucker]

4. Heh, I just picked up a stack of hard drives at the thrift store for fixing a computer there..

I haven't bought a new computer in a very long time..

[The Straight Story]

5. Pffft, "Floods" bunch a whiners, row a boat to the plant and get your work done

No excuses not to be working (whew, was channeling a republican presidential candidate there for a sec...)

[HopeHoops]

9. Yeah, what's a little muddy sludge water between platters, anyway?

[The Straight Story]

12. Exactly! Then when they go bad, we buy new ones, sue them, and get 1% back

:)

[FarCenter]

10. The saga of Hutchinson Technolgy

Hutchinson Technology made about 70% of disk head suspension assemblies for the disk drive manufacturers.

Earlier this year, they moved much of their production to Thailand, consolidated US production to Eau Claire, WI, and discontinued manufacturing in Hutchinson, MN.

Hutchinson rocked by more layoffs
http://www.startribune.com/local/117575688.html

Now the Thailand plant is underwater, and Hutchinson is scrambling to salvage equipment and to increase US production.

Flooding in Thailand forces Hutchinson Tech. to hire stateside temp workers
http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2011/11/01/hutchinson-tech-temp-workers/

Their website: http://www.htch.com/