A few weeks ago, the flooding in Thailand was causing a number of major PC hard drive makers to shut down their factories in that country. This caused PC hard drive prices to go sky high, with hard drives selling (if you can find them) for three times their normal amount. Now a new report from Digitimes claims that things may not be quite as bad as they could be in the hard drive industry.
The report claims that several channel retailers, who had been stockpiling hard drives since this issue began, might actually unload some of their inventory in December. This is apparently due to the demand of hard drives not overcoming the current supply as previously thought. The idea is that hard drive prices could be lower in December.
Furthermore, hard drive supplies are expected to bounce back in January and February 2012. This is due in part to PC hard drive makers such as Seagate and Western Digital finding ways around the issues surrounding their Thailand factories being affected by the floods. Nidec, a company that makes hard drive motors, has also reported that its Thailand plant is now back in operation.
So a combination of lower demand for PC hardware with factories in Thailand going back online has apparently saved the PC hardware industry from a rather major bottleneck in production. Of course, things could change for the worst again so we will keep an eye out for any further developments.
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