Thailand floods cause HDD shortage
Channel prepares for HDD shortage due to flooding in Thailand!
Distributor VIP Computers has warned that the
recent severe flooding in Thailand will affect the import of of hard
disk drives (HDD) Yesterday we were informed by our HDD suppliers
that severe flooding in Thailand has impacted HDD factories as well
as many sub-assembly factories in Thailand – the impact of the flood
will have a severe impact on supply as factories are damaged or
workers cannot reach factories.
Vendors hit include Western Digital, Hitachi and
Seagate. Western Digital, which produces 60 percent of its HDDs in
Thailand, has been forced to shut down its plant. Hitachi also
manufactures a large percentage of its mobile (2.5”) HDDs at a plant
in Thailand, and its plant too has been severely impacted.
Seagate relies on several sub assembly suppliers in Thailand some of
which had factories that were flooded or are shut down due to lack
of worker access. We do not believe the enterprise class products
will be as severely affected as desktop and mobile.
Bottom line, The WW HDD supply this quarter could be affected
by as much as 20 percent or close to 30m units (out of a TAM of 170M units).
This is potentially worse than the Japan disaster in March.