Flooded fabs to ship 48m fewer disks in Q4 Disk drive shipments are set to plummet by nearly 28 per cent in Q4 – 48 million fewer units than a year ago – in the wake of the devastating flooding in Thailand, says beancounter iSuppli. The ripple effect of the worst flooding in the country for more than half a century is also likely to be felt across many sectors of IT …
Considering price rise seen for 2tb units nearly everywhere in the past week or so with units that were on sale for £55 ex vat now on sale for £125 ex vat, I am hard pushed to see how anyone can say 10% price hikes as rises I am seeing are all over 100% unless you are prepared to wait 1 - 2 months for delivery.
The retailers are in knee jerk mode as people suddenly cause more demand trying to 'get in first' before the price rises. This has caused some retailers to up their prices accordingly. Worst offenders include a certain online retailer beginning with E.
The shortfall of 28% should mean price rises of no more than 30-40% but as we can see 100% or more is what is really happening. I got in quick on an Ebay 2TB Seagate for £59 inc delivery as it takes a few days for Ebay prices to 'catchup' although I have read some sellers are refunding on drives they don't actually have stock of and can no longer deliver on the stated prices.
Hard to really blame the retailer beginning with E. If you look at the drives they are really really expensive on, they show the exact same stock level as Ingram Micro.
Ingram Micro stopped all shipments of drives for the best part of the week, and are now pricing at a level that can only be intended to achieve the same effect without actually refusing to sell. We are talking over £330 (ex vat) for a 7K3000 3TB Deskstar. This is a trade distributor.
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