Gossip needs no carriage - Russian proverb
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Western Digital restarts hard drive production in Thailand
HARD DISK DRIVE MAKER Western Digital has said it expects the damage from recent flooding in Thailand to cost it at least $225m as it starts to bring the first of its factories in the region back online.
Western Digital has been hit hard by the devastating floods in Thailand, which have left a number of the firm's manufacturing facilities under water. As the company revised is financial outlook, it said the Bang Pa-in plant has started churning out hard drives again this week.
While Western Digital will turn the lights back on in its Bang Pa-in plant, head slider production is not expected to restart before March 2012. In the meantime Western Digital will bring online a new head slider manufacturing plant in Malaysia.
John Coyne, president and CEO of Western Digital said, "Much work remains to be done but we couldn't be more pleased with the effort and results thus far, including tremendous support from our supply partners and strategic customers."
Western Digital said it expects to rake in at least $1.8bn for its second quarter fiscal year 2012 with gross margins near 23 per cent. The firm also said it expects to complete its purchase of Hitachi's Global Storage Technologies division by March 2012.
While Western Digital has restarted production in Thailand, the firm also said it expects hard disk drive demand to outstrip supply well into 2012. However with production restarting, it is likely that hard drive prices will start to come back down. µ
Tags: Hardware
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My first note is that Seagate is not affected to the level that WD is but they have raised their prices almost as high as WD.
First, I think the FTC needs to look into possible colaboration between all of the HDD mfrs.
Second, WD do yourself a favor and bring the manufacturing back to the USA instead of some atoll on the "ring of fire"
Don't you understand what these islands go through every year?
That money lost could have paid USA workers wages and you wouldn't have a stoppage.
Dumb...just Dumb.
Also I don't plan on buying and HDD until they get back to a "reasonable" price. I have spares for my raid sets and a whole lot sitting in Rosewill backup cabinets that could be used if I go back to using the Seagate external pro backup drives.
FD
Maso said that Western Digital profited off of the floods when they raised their prices. The prices were raised by the suppliers. They went up "over night". Just like with gas, when the price of oil goes up, so does gas. However, gas prices aren't affected for approximately 3 months because that is how long it takes for the current barrel to turn into gas that hits the market. I am an independant oem and I am part of "the channel". I watched as the inventory shrank because my competition was buying stock as fast as I was. The prices "raised" but the inventory read zero. Prices raised because suppliers got scared they wouldn't be able to replace their inventory for a good price, just like the gas companies. Be careful when you accuse a manufaturer about making large profits because of what you see happen over night.
you hear no gurgling sound coming out of yuor new WD HDD...
Loss, what loss. Not when you'd already pre-emptively hacked your way to fabulous profits after the doubling of HDD prices on the fear mongering. The unpalatable part of all this proactive plunder is that other HDD primates got their excess profits without having to "lose" much, if any, of their fixtures & fittings to "The Flood". Aahhh, what will humans do without saviourship-cum-worship.