Nvidia & AMD Say HDD Shortage is Impacting GPU Sales

News
By Jane McEntegart
published

Hardware manufacturers continue to feel the effects of the 2011 Thai floods.

In the summer of last year, Thailand was hit with some disastrous flooding that continues to affect HDD companies and and the supply of hard drives. It's not unusual to hear HDD companies and tech analysts talk about the flooding and how it is affecting the industry. However, joining the refrain are companies with no stake in the HDD industry. They say that the shortage of hard drives has impacted PC shipments and, as such, had an effect on their businesses.

The Verge reports that both AMD and Nvidia have said the shortage of HDDs resulting from the flooding has had an impact on sales. Though neither expected to see any impact from the 2011 floods, recent earnings calls have revealed that they are feeling a squeeze due to the hard drive shortage.

Nvidia yesterday told investors it earned approximately $116 million less revenue than it had anticipated and is putting at least some of the blame on the hard drive shortage. Meanwhile, AMD also told investors that it was seeing "a little bit of pressure" thanks to the shortage.

Though neither are in the hard drive business, they say the decline in computer shipments has affected graphics processor sales because fewer computers shipped means less demand for components.

Jane McEntegart
48 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Inferno1217
    The perfect time for SSD manufacturers to lower prices, capitalize and take a huge market and yet another missed opportunity.
    Reply
  • robwright
    Floods used to be my favorite of the natural disasters (inching out typhoons and placing far ahead of earthquakes and tornadoes). But now this flooding business is really fucking up my world. Between this and the Hangover sequel, Thailand is just getting thrashed....
    Reply
  • Lord Captivus
    You don’t have to be a finance genius to see that there’s a relation between the HDD and GPU markets. Probably monitor companies have the same problems...
    Reply
  • thor220
    Inferno1217The perfect time for SSD manufacturers to lower prices, capitalize and take a huge market and yet another missed opportunity.
    Totally agree with this. If one manufacturer were to lower prices would could have seen a huge sift from HDD to SSD.
    Reply
  • c_herring
    lord captivusYou don’t have to be a finance genius to see that there’s a relation between the HDD and GPU markets. Probably monitor companies have the same problems...I'm not quite as sure about that one. Not everyone gets a new monitor with every new PC. But every worthwhile laptop has an NVidia or AMD IGP, and whether a desktop has a discrete card or an IGP there's a good chance that it, too, has an NVidia or AMD chip in it somewhere.

    I wonder how memory's doing? In theory the OEMs could still order less memory and use their overstock to fill more slots in the machines they make/sell, perhaps charging slight premiums for making 6GB and 8GB more common.
    Reply
  • tmk221
    in other news AMD said that HDD shortage won't impact their CPUs sale.....

    Reply
  • shin0bi272
    Maybe nvidia shouldnt say "be patient" when asked about their new GPU then huh? Not that that's what this article was about but it still irks me when the rumor mill says their new card will be out in 2-3 months and we havent heard anything concrete about it! Everyone expects to see their new card at CES and they talk about tablets. Then when pressed about the new geforce card they blow the question off. Then a couple of weeks later they come out and whine about low sales of their lower end/mobile chips because theres a shortage of drives. boohoo. I dont wanna hear your complaining when its gamers that put you where you are now and you dont care to even tell us about your new card.
    Reply
  • de5_Roy
    any info on how many bulldozer cpus (zambezi, valencia, interlagos) sold? llano and brazos seem to carry the cpu revenue.
    Reply
  • theuniquegamer
    That hdd shortage is making a good impact on ssd sales too. The people who were buying the performance level hdd(on or above 10k rpm) are now buying the ssd product. But the entry level pc users are being punished by such high price of hdd ( as much as double the price than before in some cases). The hdd companies are trying to sell & clear their old stockpile of 500gb, 320gb or lower hdd products in this time to entry level users.
    Reply
  • rosen380
    I'd imagine that SSDs were already selling on lower margins just to try and stay moderately competitive with HDD pricing-- and if that is the case, then they might not have a lot of room to go down until improvements in technology reduce costs.

    Reply