HDD Price Update: How the Thai Floods Have Affected Prices, 3 Months Later

New submitter jjslash writes "The hard disk drive supply chain was hit hard late last year when a series of floods struck Thailand. The Asian country accounts for about a quarter of the world's hard drive production, but thousands of factories had to close shop for weeks as facilities were under water, in what is considered the world's fourth costliest natural disaster according to World Bank estimates. That's on top of the human cost of over 800 lives. TechSpot has monitored a number of mobile and desktop HDDs to get a better overview of how the situation has developed in the last three months."

Comments

One more example of why not to have 3rd World mfg

[sethstorm]

Not only does it not represent savings, it screws everyone around the world.

Costs in well-protected nations such as the US and regions such as the EU wouldn't be stratospherically high. But don't let facts get in the way if you're going to defend the hellholes of the Third World.

Re:Why the "but"?

[hairyfeet]

And I'm smelling an ignorant asshole, but to be fair that and nerd funk are common stenches at slashdot. What you and your "Herp derp we took an economics class once so now we are Milton Friedman herp derp" are missing is that if there is no collusion all it would take is one saying "I'll undercut the others and corner the OEMs!" to make out like a fucking robber baron. do you have ANY idea how many drives someone like HP or Dell goes through? that is a hell of a lot of money and one company could undercut the others and walk away with it all for themselves.

But as we saw with BOTH LCD AND RAM that price fixing is quite prevalent in this business and I'm sure they've made it clear to each other that if they don't follow the script the third parties that they all buy supplies off of just won't sell to them no more. if you read the transcripts from the previous two cases instead of thinking a single economics class (was it home economics?) makes you an expert you'd know that is how it worked last time and how they were able to set price floors in both RAM and LCDs across the board for years.

So why not look at the actual history of the industry in question instead of giving us all some economics hand wank? Tell me does your supposed economics powers explain not one but two major scandals in the same sector in recent years? But what can we expect from just another perception bubble, thinking that some class he took a decade ago holds all the answers while ignoring evidence sitting right in front of him. Politicians love those like you that walk around with blinders, i believe they are called sheeple.