Recent severe flooding in Thailand has caused major problems for manufacturers of hard drives. Apple Inc. CEO Tim Cook has said that he is “virtually certain there will be an overall industry shortage of disk drives.” He also warns that Apple’s Mac lines will be most affected. Lenovo Group Ltd., a major manufacturer of personal computers, says the flooding in Thailand will likely impact the global supply of hard disk drives. It says it will “monitor the situation closely and take necessary actions to mitigate the potential impact.”
It’s something that is affecting numerous manufacturers, including Western Digital and Seagate, as well manufacturers of other computer parts, such as parts for optical, electro-mechanical and electronic products.
Distributors and reseller of hard drives are already reporting that they are ‘out of stock’ of several product lines and that they are experiencing problems getting new stock in. Any new stock they are obtaining has risen in price and this looks to be the likely scenario for the foreseeable future. Prices rises in the region of 10% are already being seen from our suppliers and we are having difficulty meeting orders.
We will continue to monitor the situation and keep you updated. In the meantime, if you are thinking you will need a hard drive any time soon, I recommend buying while you still can and before prices rise even further.
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With over 20 years experience in the health & social care, charity and voluntary sector I have a broad experience of the challenges facing organisations. I am familiar with both PC and Mac environments and experienced at developing web sites on Wordpress and Joomla platforms.
As the Official UK partner of hField Technologies, we distribute the highly regarded Wi-Fire usb wireless adapter. We are also Premier Partners of Synaxon, Europe's largest distributor network of IT products.