Saturday, November 5th 2011
Thailand Floods: HDD Prices To Remain Extortionately High As Supplies Get Tighter
The recent dreadful flooding in Thailand has forced the closure of several hard drive factories. The immediate concerns of course, are for the health and wellbeing of the people living and working in the area. The wider concern is the severe restriction in hard drive manufacturing capacity. Already, prices have doubled or tripled, depending on the exact model affected. The biggest HD manufacturer, Western Digital, has been hit the hardest, as IDC predicts that up to 75% of its production will be shut down. This means, that the big corporate HDD customers, those like HP and Dell, who build computer systems in large volumes, will get whatever inventory is available to fully satisfy their needs. Whatever is left is then sold on to the retail channel, for ordinary consumers to buy. IDC believes that hard disk production will reach pre-flood levels by around March, but that HDD levels by then will be very low. The prices should go through the roof then, in the meantime. As expected, this will also increase the prices of complete systems, as such a price hike is too much to absorb fully.
Source:
Network World
94 Comments on Thailand Floods: HDD Prices To Remain Extortionately High As Supplies Get Tighter
It's just a standard turn of phrase in English that means prices are really really high. I could have just as easily used "incredibly" instead of "extortionately" and it would have meant the same thing. In this context, "extortionately" doesn't literally mean that anyone is being subject to actual extortion.
"remain extortionately high" = Remain unnecessarily/Incredibly high
"Remain High due to extortion" = Extortion
Exorbitant = exceeding the customary
K now can we stop thread-crapping?
Yes, at some places the externals seem to still stay cheap, though I
m betting not for long. I'm guessing they have an overflow of stock? Does anyone know of externals with enterprise HDDs inside them? Guess not, oh well :(
Sorry for the OT:
Anyway I've noticed that the HDD I purchased some weeks ago now costs 290 EUR instead of 140 EUR, O.O
Let us try this again. Use PM or what's wrong with the forum?
No thread crap beyond this
________________________________________________________________________________________
@ radrok
What HDD was 140 EUR BEFORE the flood? :eek:
Edit : this is the cheapest price at which I could find it now o.o
www.prokoo.com/western-digital-wd1003fbyx-7200rpm-64mb-p-8068.html?keywords=RE4
I really hope this situation will solve as soon as possible because if you are going to build a new rig the HDD will increase your final price by a lot
Now, if only those hard drive prices would come down...
However, Seagate and the others WILL profit more from it and WD WILL lose from it. Globally between all the HDD manufacturers, the gain is not going to be very significant like you'd think with this price inflation, but I think there will still be a global profit from this, but it isn't completely intentional IMO, so I don't think the manufacturer's should be blamed
EDIT: I'll also add that mother nature can be unpredictable, so they need a safety net too, which further justifies the price
In the same way, if gold is suddenly 1/10th of the price... Will you be selling you gold 10x higher and make 0 sales and lose your business because "your stock was bought at a higher price" ? No, the prices follow the market value and it is much better like that
Again, common sense
EDIT: Sorry, I know I over-utilize caps lol
And there is no need to use ALL CAPITALS TO EMPHASISE A POINT AS I AM QUITE OPEN TO CONSTRUCTIVE CRTICISM AND IT JUST GETS A LITTLE BIT DISTRACTING thrOWIng CaPs in as AnD whEN yOu wanT To MAkE a POiNT :toast:
Am I missing something?
I'm not against you criticizing him... I see your point. But I have 2 points I'm trying to make:
#1 qubit is not a real journalist so he won't always be perfect in theses matters.
#2 PRIVATE MESSAGES. You can PM him and discuss it with him. If you don't like what he has to say, you have the what's wrong with you forums or PM a supermod or probably bta about it. It is sad that I have to repeat this so many times and it still doesn't get through. Hopefully a bigger size, caps, Bold, and red will help? Damn you are a moderator, I'd think you'd know this.
I'll finish with this... I have no problem with you so don't take this personally, I just don't want to see you opinion about his news style writing in multiple news threads every time. Then there are the pro-qubit and anti-qubit that fight it out on his thread and it becomes chaos. "impact on its operations in Thailand cannot yet be fully determined"
We know much more now. Not only can the discussion be more specific, but we know have estimates of how long this will last... Basically it allows a discussion about the same topic, but with more specific details and another time-frame
It is also a WD focused thread, without mentioning if other HDD manufacturers were affected.
Also note how many Thailand Flood threads and "OMG HDD prices" thread have poped up since that news post. I think this news post has a good motive to be there.
This thread is beyond saving at this point I guess, might as well participate in the thread-crapping since mods and super-mods are participating
Your post isn't crap. By thread crapping I mean this^
It derails the thread and turns it into an argument. It is not off-topic, but doesn't belong here, it belongs in PMs. At this point most of us are thread crapping, including me.
Your posts isn't crap, it at least proves there is some redundancy. I can see how you see it being a bit too redundant, but my main argument against that is the number of OMG HDD PRICES posts and threads that popped up, and also that many people want to know how long this could last.
I said super-mod, but I was being a bit unfair as the thread has already become an argument. You backed up your argument and didn't attack qubit while keeping short and simple so I have no problem with your post that this stage of the thread. So hope you don't take it personally.
And I know it was towards qubit, but I felt obliged to give my opinion ROFL
P.S: Also, I was a tad bit frustrated when I wrote that post :rolleyes:
Extortion is a legal term and it's also a turn of phrase as I have explained above and n-ster explained further in post 56. So no, once again, there's nothing wrong with the title. How would you phrase the title then?
I also have plenty of integrity too. What, are you calling me a liar or something? :wtf:
If you have a comment to make about my news writing, then you of all people as a mod, should know that the best place to comment on it is in the comments section and/or PM. If you comment over there, then feel free to PM a link to make sure I see your post and we can talk about it. Also, it's nice to get news on the weekend, no? ;)
If you really think I'm doing such an awful job, then why don't you take it up with W1zz & bta? Clearly they don't think so, or I'd soon hear from them, trust me.
Believe me, I'm not going to change my news style just because you and a handful of others disapprove. In short, I don't do bland news and my style is similar to The Register or TechEye.
So, to repeat, please make your comments in the right place and don't derail my news threads.
Finally, here's a pertinent excerpt of what Kreij wrote in another news thread: And believe it or not, I do appreciate that you're trying to be constructive, even though our views are diametrically opposite. :toast: No, it's not redundant, but I can see why you might think so. As n-ster said, it's a development of the situation, or an update if you will. Clearly the other sites that have reported this story, including the one I sourced this one from think there's merit in reporting this. It's basically gonna be a flippin' long time until the recovery from the floods is complete and the prices come down to normal again. A real shame for everyone.
i dont think these prices are extortionately high so i don't believe you should have used that word. i believe the prices are actually an accurate reflection of market price after a major disaster. a good title would have been "HDD prices to remain high as supplies tighten."