Hard Drive Shortage Takes Toll on Motherboard Market
Hard Drive Shortage Takes Toll on Motherboard Market
Posted 11/09/2011 at 11:54am
| by Paul Lilly
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Woe is you if your hard drive gives up the ghost, and not just because of the hassle involved with restoring data from your backups (because you are backing up your files, right?). The other reason it sucks to lose a hard drive right now is because recent flooding in Thailand hit HDD makers pretty hard, resulting in a shortage, which itself has resulted in higher prices. Unfortantely, the trickle down effect doesn't stop there.
Industry sources tell DigiTimes that the HDD shortage is also having a negative impact on fourth quarter motherboard shipments. We're not talking about just a small dent, either. Overall, fourth quarter motherboard shipments are expected to decrease up to 15 percent.
Gigabyte in particular is on pace to end the year on a sour note. The company's Q4 motherboard shipments could see a decline as high as 25 percent. Asus, meanwhile, expects motherboard shipments to drop from 6,3 million in the third quarter to 6 million in the fourth, while MSI, ECS, and ASRock are each bracing for a drop of at least 10 percent.
Image Credit: Asus
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pastorbob
November 10, 2011 at 5:12am
I guess I have plenty of insurance with 12 hard drives among 4 systems. My obsession for redundancy has paid off.
EthicSlave
November 09, 2011 at 8:55pm
sure they posting early year theoretical numbers and at the end of the year hoping for a disaster to blame
couldnt possibly be economy related / and or losing money from marketshares
Holly Golightly
November 09, 2011 at 3:41pm
If wonder if this HDD shortage will effect SSD sales? I think the demand for SSDs are only going to grow, and now that we got the flood in Thailand, causing supply of HDDs to go short, it seems like a natural transistion to go from HDD to SDD... My two cents.
ShyLinuxGuy
November 09, 2011 at 12:58pm
I'd like to see more manufacturing in the US too, but as far as computer components and electronic/high-tech/mass-market stuff is concerned, it will never happen. Maybe processors (some of Intel's fabbing happens in Oregon and Arizona), but that's it. Asus and MSI are companies based in Asia, so they will not have that happen.
There's definitely a bunch of dumbasses running the hard drive industry to consolidate 99% of the manufacturing activities in one area, and then again for not having the lands surveyed properly to ensure less risk from disaster. This is definitely a lesson that they will learn.
Turbo Charge
November 09, 2011 at 12:12pm
Company's like asus and msi and others need to band together and create there own hd company and quit depending the like's of western and seagate besides they have got a monopoly on the market and look what happen. Wait here's an idea umm maybe make them in the good old U.S.A. and create jobs at the same time making a dependable product.
d3v
November 10, 2011 at 12:14am
They don't have the technology to do that. There are only a handful of HDD manufacturers world wide for a very good reason. Only they have the technology to make hard drives at a competitive cost per gigabyte. And they protect their secrets. Plus it's not a very profitable business to be in anyway.
SirFrag
November 09, 2011 at 7:48pm
The issue there is that they never will make them in the US. It would be enormously expensive as siilled labor here is double to tripple what they find overseas. You could expect to see component price double, tripple, or more. Then, because not all company would follow this, the market would shift to buying the cheap drives made overseas, resulting in the US based companies to fail. There would be no way for them to be competitive in pricing making the drives here. It's sad, but true.
Jack253
November 09, 2011 at 2:53pm
You know I've been saying the same thing for a long time.Maybe this is what it will take to get the ball rolling.
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