Hard Drive Prices to Remain Inflated Throughout 2012
In Q4 2011, HDD shipments dropped by 26 percent over the same period in the previous year. Shipments will by 13 percent in Q1 and 5 percent in Q2 on an annual basis, IHS believes. In Q3, the market will stabilize and grow by 2 percent and bounce back with 49 percent in the fourth quarter of this year. Sequentially, HDD shipments are predicted to climb 14 percent in Q1, 11 percent in Q3 and 4 percent in Q4.
“The recovery of global HDD manufacturing has begun and will continue during each quarter of 2012,” noted Fang Zhang, storage analyst for IHS. “However, the recovery will be prolonged for at least two more quarters, as supply constraints keep unit shipments from climbing on an annual basis until third quarter." The shortage will translate to continued inflated prices throughout 2012, the firm said.
HDD makers and component suppliers have resumed only partial production in Thailand and have shifted some of their manufacturing to other countries to alleviate the impact of the supply shortage. According to IHS, Western Digital has been the HDD manufacturer most impacted by the floods and is not expected to return to full production until September.
IHS said that the Thailand flood has caused the global average selling price (ASP) for HDDs to jump by 28 percent in Q4 2011. Prices are forecast to decline by 3 percent in Q1 and by 9 percent in Q2. “Prices will remain high for a number of reasons, including the higher costs associated with the relocation of production, as well as higher component costs because of flooding impacts among component makers,” Zhang said. “Furthermore, PC brands have signed annual contacts with HDD makers that have locked them into elevated pricing deals for the rest of the year.”
- Seagate,
- Western Digital,
- Storage,
- hdd ,
- hard-drive ,
- thailand-flood ,
- prices ,
- shortage
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Great... Title should read: "Seagate continues price gouging thru 2012"
Noooo!!! I was hoping prices would drop significantly this year. Ohhhh well, I guess I'll have to ration this 1GB of space remaining.
???
!@#$
looks like retailers will milk this unfortunate situation longer.
ah.......No, numbers far closer to 100%
1TB HDD cost about MYR 180 or about 60USD where I live, 5 months ago.
1TB HDD cost about MYR 340 or about 113USD.
Prices jumped by 20%?
Well not when the flood prices hit at first, a 2TB drive instantly went up by like 100%+
Now I can find 2TB HDD's for $130 which is a lot better than $200.
Which reminds me I'm out of drive bays.. DAMN IT!
Looks like I'll be investing in NAS or upgrading my mix of 1-2TB drives all to 4TB.
Don't forget price fixing.
!@#$looks like retailers will milk this unfortunate situation longer.
Retailers don't have the power to influence the prices. If they price their merchandise too high, customers are going to buy somewhere else.
If anyone has the power to influence prices, it's the manufacturers themselves, but even they are in fierce competition.
It looks like Thailand is preparing for more flooding this June/July..........in all the same areas. Could disrupt HDD production for the whole year...and beyond.
here in Poland I need to pay PLN450 for 1TB instead of PLN170 a year ago.... that's 160% more!!!!!!!!!!. That's f-in insane...
My Samsung is made in Korea but still sell's for double the price today
so WD Seagate Samsung Hitachi all raised there prices to match
Seagate just wanted to continue this "flooding impacts production" excuse and price the HDD as high as possible. They tripled their profits after this flooding issues happened. Most probably they may overtake Microsoft after 2012................
The number of units officially manufactured/shipped by manufacturers is more or less the same as it was last year. But thanks to the price increase fraud they have been allowed to do with no control.. FBI doesn't do a damn thing against true frauds nowadays with Obama it seems, they are too busy shutting down "pirates" websites.
No with more floods coming in Thailand hard disk manufacturers managers will keep their fraud-the-whole-world plan going strong with no fear of getting jailed as it should happen.
test comment
Yes HDD prices have gone up, but even at 100% increase, it is still very cheap per GB. Now is the time to invest in SSD, 120GB ssd for less than £1 per GB. If you are short of storage, buy a 120GB SSD, Install OS on it and fav applications/games, use extra GB wisely until HDD prices drop!
I simply refuse to buy at such prices even though I can afford it I simply do not see the hard-drives being of such value. As long as I am not in a absolute requirement to make the purchase I will hold off buying a new hard-drive.
20% my white a.. its more like 100% or even 200% in some cases here... guess i wont be upgrading my hdd's this year not unless the EU steps in, and that is unlikely. Unfortunatly i think this will impact SSD's aswell in the long run. This whole flood is just an excuse to raise profit margins in an otherwise extremely competitive market.
who is this fang zhang :| why should we believe him :| let's not buy new hard drive, til they dropped the price
meanwhile Microcenter is having a HUGE sale on SSD's.... So Tempting... Self control failing...
Jump from $72 to $182+ is more than 28%, I'd say.
(Example for SpinPoint F3 1TB in my country.)
Hard drives will remain on shelves until price gouging stop.
At least from my perspective it will.
How could this happen? If you're going to invest $100s of millions or billions in buildings and equipment that's hard to move you do a really REALLY careful site evaluation that considers hundreds of factors. One of them is flood risk, which should be one of the easy ones. No doubt all these facilities carried insurance. The insurance company is typically a partner in risk evaluation. What am I missing here? I suppose I could be asking the same questions about those Japanese nuclear plants.
How could this happen? If you're going to invest $100s of millions or billions in buildings and equipment that's hard to move you do a really REALLY careful site evaluation that considers hundreds of factors. One of them is flood risk, which should be one of the easy ones. No doubt all these facilities carried insurance. The insurance company is typically a partner in risk evaluation. What am I missing here? I suppose I could be asking the same questions about those Japanese nuclear plants.
"Is the labor cheap?"
"Check."
"Are business regulations at minimum?"
"Check."
"Are the taxes low?"
"Check."
"Is the flood control sufficient since we're building in a flood-prone area?"
"Well, not really, but our workers can put up sandbag barriers, so check."
The grammar is so awful in that first Paragraph (a drunk monkey can write better), that I stopped reading
Great... Title should read: "Seagate continues price gouging thru 2012"
Actually wholesalers are the ones price gouging, NOT Seagate. Seagate's prices have gone up 10-15% while wholesalers such as Ingram Micro are jacking up the prices 50-100%.
By Q4 SSDs prices will fall which will impact HD sales. Estimates show that,"SSD prices to equal hard drives in under a year." If hard drive makers don't get their ducks in a roll this may be a show stopper.
http://www.pcr-online.biz/news/rea [...] ear/027696
On a good note this may influence Intel to discount their new SSD Cherryville with CPU sales.
I recall I could buy asus board for AMD for about 50 Euro in 2006, semi premiums for 60-80, "premiums" for 80-120 Euro.
Fast forward a couple of years, and, oh, it's 30-60% pricier. Oh, end exactly same enermax PSU costs 30% more. Wow.
I wonder what "natural disaster" caused that?
/sarcasm
Seriously, what can we do vs transnational cartel agreements?
One of my hard drives started making the clicking noise of death this past week. I just said "@#^%, this couldn't happen at a worse time." Looks like I'll just have to bend over and take it to get a new hard drive for that computer.
the prices will never go down,
the HDD Companies are going to do what the oil companies have been doing since the Pipeline broke,
Raise the Price through the Roof, promise they are gonna lower them, lower them little by little and every time something happens, whether it affects the HDDs or not, they go right back up.
So, prices will drop about $10 next month, and when a 200lb chunk of seaweed washes up on Australia's beach, they'll cite that it affected them somehow and jack the prices back up.
I have heard that the flooding only had an impact on specific models of drives, but the manufacturers were more than willing to take advantage of the situation.
I call bs. They know the PC manufacturers have no other choice so HDD manufacturers are just purposely keeping the prices inflated to massively profit from PC manufacturers and customers.