PC Makers Run Short of Popular Drives

Lucas123 writes "The impact from the monsoonal flooding in Thailand over the past three months is now being felt by users as computer system manufacturers are unable to meet supply needs. Lenovo told its corporate customers this week that is has run out of a number of drives including several types of 7200rpm and 5400rpm HDDs. 'Akin to the hysteria when banks defaulted in the 1930[s], PC orders across the industry are being placed for which HD supply does not exist,' a Lenovo rep wrote to his clients. IDC this week said the HDD shortages that have resulted from the flooding of four major Thailand industrial parks will likely be felt into 2013. Western Digital and Toshiba have been hit the hardest. PC shipments are also expected to fall short by 3.8 million units in the first quarter of 2012 due to component supply shortages. Meanwhile, there has been some indication of retail HDD price stabilization, but for some of the most popular hard drives prices continue to soar."

Comments

Re:What do they expect?

[bill_mcgonigle]

isn't a totally free market GREAT??

It is, yes. But what you have here is just about the opposite of that - a steaming pile of regulation and taxation that drove a large percentage of the hard drive manufacturing industry to one geographic area (a friendly regime).

All the US plants weren't closed because US workers were cheap and the business environment was conducive to low-friction business.

silly humans. we can't plan for shit, as a species.

True that. And yet the central planners spend all their days believing that they can because they're smarter than everybody else.

Even the teensy ones?

[Just Some Guy]

What will Microsoft et al do without a constant supply of itsy-bitsy hyper-overpriced drives to shove into consoles? Will they be forced to buy cheaper 1TB drives off the shelf of Walmart and partition them down to a size that sounds great to a gamer and laughable to everyone else?