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
Yes, your title works, it's accurate and it's fine, but it's bland and I don't do bland. I think extortionately does apply to this, so it all just boils down to... opinion. Again, lol. It gets across the "WTF!!" factor any poor buyer in the market for a hard drive right now feels. I think this is just splitting hairs now, seriously. Hard drives are very expensive right now, regardless of the exact words one uses.
Can we call a truce now please?!
This is why mods usually try to stop the MAC vs PC and INTEL vs AMD comments as they derail threads. The qubit vs not qubit style is what happened here. I mean look at the thread! You can't in all honesty tell me this "calling out" didn't derail the threadIsn't high technically an opinion too? You could see HDD prices being a steal, and now they are less cheap or normal. Yes the prices are higher, but not necessarily high. I admit the word "remain" neutralizes this point somewhat. Just trying to point out there can be "opinion" in many news titles that you might find appropriate.
Again though, the "extortionately" can mean with extortion, but it can also mean that it exceeds the customary, and the later is true and perhaps the best neutral way of saying it.
Extortion is an apt description of the event. A high price is above market value, extortion is a forced and excessive payment, because no option is left for you. Since retailers unilaterally tripled cost, before shortage even occurred, this is price gouging, something that happens on new releases, and when shortages occur. It is not justified, and you know prices will fall to what they really should have been adjusted to based on the articles predicted 25% impact on supply. Fact is that these retailers did NOT pay the price they are charging at the minute, so yes.. not illegal just dubious as hell and should not be supported.
I will cinch my data belt and wait till prices fall back down to appropriate levels before I purchase a HDD for myself.
As to the title, despite its apropos connotations, when people use excessive adjectives in their assessments I tend to dismiss their opinions as juvenile. And that is what it sounds like a teenager writing a news article. (No offense qubit, I do not mean your wording I mean in generally, sensationalist words smack of youthful or ignorant writing.. ). similar consternations would be applied to those that think "Intel murders/rapes/slaughters AMD or crushes, demoralizes, or takes your mother out for a nice seafood dinner and never calls her again!" type of comments.
*free cookie for the first person to name the movie of that last part :)
(Sorry for the wordy post, I am in writing mode right now)
now imana write my post but I wanted to be first lol
What the retailers did was not extortion IMO... It is as simple as supply and demand. If they had kept their prices low, they would have lost precious stock they have. They priced up HDDs to slow down the demand in order to keep enough stock for the months to come. If they didn't, we'd be out of HDDs during the Christmas shopping which is very bad :p
Extortionately =/= extortion btw
One of the definitions of extortionately is exceeding the customary. That is exactly what the prices of HDDs are right now, and it is the best way to describe it. Even "remain high" is less correct than "exceeds the customary". Using the turn of phrase would have made the title bland, hence the synonym
a disaster of this magnitude first effects the manufacturer. supply is now limited so the price naturally increases to retain some sort of revenue. the retailers then fight each other to acquire as much of the product as possible. this immediately shoots the retail price through the roof as a bidding war begins for the short supply. as a way to off set the long term costs retailers raise the price on their current stock so they have more cash to bid on the short supply. retailers know that some consumers will pay the higher costs because those consumers have a higher demand for the product while others will wait. retailers capitalize on their high demand customers who build a higher cost into their own products and services. this actually softens the blow as the total cost is now spread out to a wider group of people. as supply begins to come back the cost to retailers will decrease adding certainty in the marketplace. costs will then go down for consumers as prices reach an equilibrium for the greatest population of consumer demand.
tldr; it isn't extortion.
I couldn't explain it quite like that.
if prices on HDDs crash (much lower than they were before the disaster) when the disaster is all cleaned up and people are back to work then we will know the retailers overcharged for their limited stock to the consumer. this is bad for the retailers because they lose on the initial high cost after the disaster and they lose after the disaster because they can't charge enough for the HDDs. it behooves retailers to keep prices as low as they possibly can during a disaster to avoid that.
My ECON 1000 class I'm taking didn't cover disasters yet lol, but I'm only 1/4 into the class (a full year class)
At least I came to the same conclusion LOL
This is madness!!!
because the factory drowned due to flooding
in my country
before Internal 3,5" WDC Green 2TB SATA6 price $90:D
After flood disaster price $150 :banghead:
Bonus
in prediction hdd prices will continue to rise
many stores who have stock hdd in large quantities to take advantage of two and even three-fold,whereas at the time of purchasing stock from the manufacturer with the normal price
Just look into the clouds ;)
Anyway how funny it would look if they make a hdd factory up there. :laugh: