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Intel Revenue Dives $1bn On Hard Disk Shortage

Posted by samzenpus on from the disks-must-flow dept.

nk497 writes "The hard disk shortage caused by the flooding in Thailand will cost Intel $1 billion in lost revenue, the company said. It had initially predicted revenue of $14.7bn this quarter, but that will now be $13.7bn, it said. 'Sales of personal computers are expected to be up sequentially in the fourth quarter,' Intel said. 'However, the worldwide PC supply chain is reducing inventories and microprocessor purchases as a result of hard disk drive supply shortages.'"

7 of 198 comments (clear)

  1. SSD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The perfect time for Intel to push SSDs?

    1. Re:SSD by Grishnakh · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Sure, as soon as they come up with $100 1TB SSDs.

      SSDs are fine for OS disks and applications, but for anything requiring serious data storage, they're just too small and expensive. Lots of people these days use their computers for storing and watching movies; you need terabyte hard drives for that.

  2. Re:Revenue? by quintus_horatius · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Profit beyond that which is necessary to cover risk (unfortunate troubles) is theft

    In a capitalist system, that's not theft. If the price is agreed to by all involved parties then it's fair.

    A company may boost it's profits for any number of reasons, not all of which are driven by pure greed - bankrolling some money for future growth being the obvious one. Or would you prefer that companies grow by borrowing, which involves usury (which, by your too-much-profit principle, may be a more pernicious form of theft)?

  3. Re:Revenue? by Baloroth · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Profit is inherent in the concept of trade. Two people agree to an exchange because both value what they receive more than what they had. In a very real way, a fair trade involves both parties profiting. In different ways, true, but profit nevertheless. This drives trade, and has for thousands of years. For producers, they generally receive the profit as money. Intel is a producer.

    If this fact did not hold, trade would not create profit, there would be no incentive to trade or produce, and the entire system of production would collapse. Incidentally, this is also why Marxist Communism doesn't work... or one reason, anyways.

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    "None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
  4. Re:Intel sells hard drives? by Shatrat · · Score: 5, Informative

    Intel does not sell computers. They sell processors to people who sell computers. Those people can't built computers without hard drives, so they are buying fewer processors. Not that hard to figure out.

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    09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
  5. All eggs in one basket. by Beelzebud · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Good thing we can't make hard drives any where else in the world! I love globalization. I don't know anyone in the states that could be trusted to work at a plant making hard drives. They'd expect to be able to pay for food, shelter, and clothing, and we can't have that!

  6. Re:Intel sells hard drives? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Or, and potentially just as bad for Intel, they're using a lower-speced and likely lower margin CPU to make up some of the cost difference due to the HDD.