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Higher Hard Drive Prices Are the New Normal
An anonymous reader tips an article looking at the state of HDD pricing now that the market has had time to recover from the flooding in Thailand and a round of consolidation among manufacturers. Prices have certainly declined from the high they reached during the flooding, but they've stabilized a bit higher than they were beforehand. Quoting:
"Are things going to change any time soon? We doubt it. WD and Seagate both reported record profits this past quarter. In Q1 2011, Western Digital reported net profit of $146M against sales of $2.3B while Seagate recorded $2.7B in revenue and $93 million in net income. That’s a net profit margin of 6% and 3%, respectively. For this past quarter, Western Digital reported sales of $3B (thanks in part to its acquisition of Hitachi) and a net income of $483 million, while Seagate hit $4.4B in revenue and $1.1B in profits. Net margin was 16% and 37% respectively. With profit margins like this, the hard drive manufacturers are going to be loath to cut prices. After years of barely making profits, the Thailand floods are the best excuse ever to drive record income for a few quarters. All of this means that while we expect prices to gradually decline, holding off on a necessary purchase doesn’t make much sense."
Not only is the competition pre-empted by two megacorps buying all the other outfits, it's a race to the bottom in quality too. By far the best quality drives were Samsung - just look at the ratings on Newegg. - followed by Hitachi Global Storage.
Now Samsung is Seagate; the drives are starting to come throught with ST model numbers. And Hitachi is WD. The quality of both Seagate and WD has been pure shit for a long time. No one is going to be able to get a drive better than garbage quality anywhere any more.
(not addressing you directly Vicarius) OK, you capitalism fan bois, worshipful eyes blazing with faith, how come your favorite shitty system brings us to this sorry state?