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Hard drive prices to remain above pre-flood levels until 2014
A new report from IHS iSuppli says that mechanical hard drive prices are not expected to return to pre-flood pricing until 2014 despite a rapid recovery process that is in full swing.
Hard drive prices skyrocketed following the October 2011 floods that damaged Seagate and Western Digital production plants in the area. Costs jumped 28 percent from the third quarter to the fourth quarter last year as shipments fell 29 percent. Pricing held steady at $66 in Q1 2012 while analysts predict asking prices will decline marginally to $65 in the second quarter.
The report notes that shipments increased by 18 percent to 145 million in the first quarter and another 10 percent to 159 million in the second. Furthermore, another 10 percent increase to 173 million is expected in Q3 but prices will likely continue to remain inflated.
PC sales are expected to climb throughout the rest of 2012 which means more hard drives will be needed. Ivy Bridge and the emergence of third generation Ultrabooks in the coming months as well as Microsoft’s release of Windows 8 later this year are key forces driving the demand.
As such, multiple OEMs have signed long-term agreements with hard drive makers to guarantee shipments and lock in pricing that is only 20 percent higher than pre-flood levels.
With solid state drive pricing continuing to drop and performance on the rise, now might be as good a time as any to jump on that bandwagon if you are building a new system or simply desire a significant speed boost from your current notebook or deskop.
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User Comments: 35
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1 person liked this |LNCPapa said:
I'm sorry, I don't know if I sensed any rage in your last post, Guest. Sure, we "morons" may not have all the info, but the only thing we can do to combat the still inflated prices is speak with our wallets. Those who really need additional storage now will buy it. Those who can wait or refuse to pay the after-flood premiums will wait. If you think there has never been a conspiracy within a company that is masked by tragedy then I think you may be the one with the blinders on.
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Where's the damn thumbs up "like" button when you actually need it!
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What a bunch of morons. Can you click the LINK to the report? Very first thing in the report....the $65 is the ASP, or Average Selling Price, of all hard drives sold globally. And no, that's not retail pricing.
As for the shortage being contrived....I guess morons don't read the newspaper, visit news sites online or watch TV news. There was a MASSIVE FLOOD (massive meaning it covered 1/3 of the total land mass in Taiwan!) that took out a huge number of HD plants and plants that make critical pieces for almost ALL of the HD makers.
I went over to Taiwan as part of a salvage group hired by Nidec, a company that supplies nearly 3/4 of all the drive motors for WD, Seagate, Samsung, Hitachi and Toshiba. We brought DIVERS to go down and try and recover machinery and other equipment, that's how much under water these places were.
So yeah, sit there on your asses and toss out your uninformed conspiracy theories since that's a lot easier than actually trying to find the facts.
Morons.
how long ago was that? water evaporates you know, and it seeps into the ground, and based on common sense and science, it all should have been MONTHS ago. When you have that many hardware companies depending on you and have that much income, its not the end of the line to restart a chunk of your factories.
I know they all had it tough over there, and I feel bad for them. But the big companies are NOT even close to the worst off people there, they have it pretty damn easy.
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treetops said:
I got a 7200 rpm 2 tb hd for about 100$ a month ago, I was in desperate need of a 2nd drive. I was considering a ssd butttttt, not with this oil company type news.
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LOL. I guess we should be happy that at least some people on this planet still believe in altruism and are incapable of believing that a company would keep prices high artificially to make larger profits.
Good luck Guest, and good luck with helping out that Nigerian prince...
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the floods werent in taiwan they were in wales
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Doctor John said:
There are floods in Wales, but I humbly suggest that this is a separate issue.
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Ohhh yes, they were. At least at the internet store I go to most of the time, prices stayed flat for a few days, then some hard drives went out of stock, then more went out of stock, then prices went up, and at the peak of the price hike, prices were more than double what they had bee nb efore and less than a third of models were in stock, most were shippable at "unkown" dates...
... on the corporate side of things, the place I work for buys "professional" machines, meaning "established" technology, meaning nothing larger than 500 GB, for prices I wouldn't pay for twice that. And those were in stock alright. I bet the makers of those computers have them stockpiled in huge numbers because they're barely being manufactured anymore.
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3DCGMODELER said:
Just dont shut your HD's off....
na just kidding..
I have 2 Spare drives, WD 10,000 rpm drives, 600 gig ea...
Yep just watch for sales...
yep yep
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avoidz said:
Same as others here. I am holding out buying any new HDs until this greedy scam ends.
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