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It’s a bad time to be one of the top two hard drive manufacturers in the world right now. Both Seagate and Western Digital maintain large manufacturing facilities in Thailand, which is currently battling extreme flooding that has sent people fleeing from their homes and devastated the nation’s infrastructure. Yesterday, Western Digital halted all production at its Bangkok-area facilities, and today, Seagate said that local supply chain issues caused by the flooding will probably affect its production schedule as well.
“Currently, all Seagate factories in Thailand are operational and there are no logistical issues with employees reaching its factories,” Seagate said in a released statement. “However, the hard disk drive component supply chain is being disrupted and it is expected that certain components in the supply chain will be constrained. Given the volatility of the situation it is unclear what the magnitude of the supply chain disruption will be to Seagate’s hard disk drive output from its Thailand operations.”
Thankfully, the company says none of its employees are among the hundreds that have died in the floods. Production woes at major facilities of the two biggest players in the HDD market could very likely impact pricing and availability for the components in the next quarter, but it is still too early to make a definitive call on the situation. Like Western Digital, Seagate expects to give an update on the situation in its quarterly conference call, scheduled for a week from today.
Comments are closed on this article
Zoandar
October 16, 2011 at 8:56am
It's hard to feel sorry for any once-US company who packs up and moves to the 3rd world, screwing all its US employees. They get what they deserve.
penskeford
October 13, 2011 at 4:27pm
I'm sure they can find another, cheaper third world labor force sweat factory to build these things in. They're not doing much in Myanmar these days.
Bullwinkle J Moose
October 13, 2011 at 11:05am
Who cares?
Companies that require downgrading to a Spyware Platform to use the new Advanced Format Drives deserve to be out of business PERMANENTLY!
Too bad it's ony temporary
Factoid of the Day >
If WD and Seagate continued manufacturing XP compatibe drives without requiring overlays and SSD Manufacturers made XP compatible SSD's, then XP would still have a greater market share than Vista and Windows 7 Spyware COMBINED!
