Western Digital Shakes Off Thailand Flood Impact, Retakes Hdd Market Lead In 2Q12, Says Ihs

[Notstupid30]

Six months after losing the top spot in the global hard disk drive (HDD) segment due to the flooding disaster in Thailand, Western Digital in the second quarter recovered its market lead from chief rival Seagate Technology, according to an IHS iSuppli Storage Space Market Brief from information and analytics provider IHS.

Western Digital produced approximately 71 million HDD units in the second quarter, including production from Hitachi GST, a company acquired by Western Digital earlier in the year. Revenues for Western Digital amounted to US$4.8 billion, a company record.

In comparison, Seagate shipped 65.9 million HDD units during the same period, with revenues reaching US$4.5 billion, also a record in Seagate's books.

"Western Digital lost its number one shipment ranking to Seagate in the fourth quarter of 2012 after flooding in Thailand damaged its HDD manufacturing facility," said Fang Zhang, analyst for storage systems at IHS. "The company now has fully recovered from the disaster, allowing it to sharply increase shipments of HDDs for notebooks, up 28% from the first quarter. Western Digital is on track to retain the top spot in shipments and revenues for the third quarter."

Read More : http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20120829PR203.html?mod=2

[ITGabs]

I didn't know that hitachi now is part of WD

WD in Thailand produced more than the 50% of all the WD HDD demand in the world, I read something about that in the news about the latest flood

[Sayonarax]

That's a lot of HDD.

[Dork]

WD & Seagate combined now have more than 80% of the HDD market. That is how in the same year they managed to increase the world wide price of HDD's by 50% and both (by coincidence, of course) reduce the warranty period on their products - AND, blame it all on the floods in Thailand.

Yeah, right!

[rakman]

WD & Seagate combined now have more than 80% of the HDD market. That is how in the same year they managed to increase the world wide price of HDD's by 50% and both (by coincidence, of course) reduce the warranty period on their products - AND, blame it all on the floods in Thailand.

Yeah, right!

Put away the tin-foil hat. Demand for disks keeps increasing, supply was greatly reduced because of the floods.

Market forces allow for drives to be available, you have to really want or need one and pay the higher price. If it's a discretionary purchase, you put it off, freeing up drives for others who will pay the price. Thus it's called the law of supply and demand. ECON-101.

Drive prices have come back down to pre-flood prices or lower as supply is filling up again.

[Dork]

WD & Seagate combined now have more than 80% of the HDD market. That is how in the same year they managed to increase the world wide price of HDD's by 50% and both (by coincidence, of course) reduce the warranty period on their products - AND, blame it all on the floods in Thailand.

Yeah, right!

Put away the tin-foil hat. Demand for disks keeps increasing, supply was greatly reduced because of the floods.

Market forces allow for drives to be available, you have to really want or need one and pay the higher price. If it's a discretionary purchase, you put it off, freeing up drives for others who will pay the price. Thus it's called the law of supply and demand. ECON-101.

Drive prices have come back down to pre-flood prices or lower as supply is filling up again.

Thanks. I think most people can understand the price is a product of supply and demand and that if you can influence one or the other you can influence the price. I guess my point was that when you have 80% of the market (by buying the competition) you are able to control supply and hence the price. You may believe that was entirely caused by the flooding in Thailand. I don't.

Last October, the market price of a 2TB WD EARX series in Bangkok was THB2600. Right now the lowest price is THB3400. Other drives I've checked seem similar so I'm confused by your statement about prices now being the same or lower. Can you enlighten me please.

[tig28]

I didn't know that hitachi now is part of WD

WD in Thailand produced more than the 50% of all the WD HDD demand in the world, I read something about that in the news about the latest flood

Hi ITgabs

Not Hiatachi -- just a sub-division....... Hitachi Global Storage Technologies

[rakman]

WD & Seagate combined now have more than 80% of the HDD market. That is how in the same year they managed to increase the world wide price of HDD's by 50% and both (by coincidence, of course) reduce the warranty period on their products - AND, blame it all on the floods in Thailand.

Yeah, right!

Put away the tin-foil hat. Demand for disks keeps increasing, supply was greatly reduced because of the floods.

Market forces allow for drives to be available, you have to really want or need one and pay the higher price. If it's a discretionary purchase, you put it off, freeing up drives for others who will pay the price. Thus it's called the law of supply and demand. ECON-101.

Drive prices have come back down to pre-flood prices or lower as supply is filling up again.

Thanks. I think most people can understand the price is a product of supply and demand and that if you can influence one or the other you can influence the price. I guess my point was that when you have 80% of the market (by buying the competition) you are able to control supply and hence the price. You may believe that was entirely caused by the flooding in Thailand. I don't.

Last October, the market price of a 2TB WD EARX series in Bangkok was THB2600. Right now the lowest price is THB3400. Other drives I've checked seem similar so I'm confused by your statement about prices now being the same or lower. Can you enlighten me please.

Here in the US before the flood I bought a new 36 drive storage system for USD $11,000. After impact of the flood on production, the same box cost USD$13,500. Now that the production is back up and running, the price is back down to $11,000. Even 3TB drives are back down in price.

Thus, yes the floods cratered supply, so the price went up.

Amazing thing about foreign manufacturing. Distribution usually is not in the production country, they end up being delivered to another country then back to the originating country. So a lag in price is possible. it's also possible that demand in Thailand is still high, and supplies haven't caught up.

Why do companies do this? TAXES imposed by various governments. Shrink government and get them out of the market.

Also, virtually all the disk manufacturers used parts from Thailand, and the floods affected almost all of them. Shame that companies didn't look at their DR plans and diversified their plants better. Disk drives are so competitive and low margins that companies will move plants to gain a small cost reduction. Seagate, now a long time ago, used to have a plant in Ireland. When there was a more advantageous situation, they moved the plant to Malaysia. Such is the industry.

Don't buy into the conspiracy crap.

[JanKlaasen]

WD & Seagate combined now have more than 80% of the HDD market. That is how in the same year they managed to increase the world wide price of HDD's by 50% and both (by coincidence, of course) reduce the warranty period on their products - AND, blame it all on the floods in Thailand.

Yeah, right!

Put away the tin-foil hat. Demand for disks keeps increasing, supply was greatly reduced because of the floods.

Market forces allow for drives to be available, you have to really want or need one and pay the higher price. If it's a discretionary purchase, you put it off, freeing up drives for others who will pay the price. Thus it's called the law of supply and demand. ECON-101.

Drive prices have come back down to pre-flood prices or lower as supply is filling up again.

Thanks. I think most people can understand the price is a product of supply and demand and that if you can influence one or the other you can influence the price. I guess my point was that when you have 80% of the market (by buying the competition) you are able to control supply and hence the price. You may believe that was entirely caused by the flooding in Thailand. I don't.

Last October, the market price of a 2TB WD EARX series in Bangkok was THB2600. Right now the lowest price is THB3400. Other drives I've checked seem similar so I'm confused by your statement about prices now being the same or lower. Can you enlighten me please.

Here in the US before the flood I bought a new 36 drive storage system for USD $11,000. After impact of the flood on production, the same box cost USD$13,500. Now that the production is back up and running, the price is back down to $11,000. Even 3TB drives are back down in price.

Thus, yes the floods cratered supply, so the price went up.

Amazing thing about foreign manufacturing. Distribution usually is not in the production country, they end up being delivered to another country then back to the originating country. So a lag in price is possible. it's also possible that demand in Thailand is still high, and supplies haven't caught up.

Why do companies do this? TAXES imposed by various governments. Shrink government and get them out of the market.

Also, virtually all the disk manufacturers used parts from Thailand, and the floods affected almost all of them. Shame that companies didn't look at their DR plans and diversified their plants better. Disk drives are so competitive and low margins that companies will move plants to gain a small cost reduction. Seagate, now a long time ago, used to have a plant in Ireland. When there was a more advantageous situation, they moved the plant to Malaysia. Such is the industry.

Don't buy into the conspiracy crap.

First of all this is a Thailand oriented forum, so what the price was or is for a hdd in the US, Zimbabwe or Afghanistan doesn't really matter.

Western Digital is producing in Thailand and blames the floods, which are almost a year ago, for their price rises.So now after almost a year and the obvious fact that WD can produce at full rate again as written in the OP, the prices should have come down to pre flood era or at least near.

But as Dork already said a 2Tb was 2600 Thb pre flood with 5 year warranty and is now still 31 % more expensive at 3400 Thb with 2 year warranty. By the way I think WD is also producing in Malaysia, since hardware house imports it's hdd's from Malaysia for years already.

Regarding the 3 Tb, I doubt it was already available last year, but anyway today it costs still more than 1.5 times a 2 Tb disk.

Edit to add : I just notice your comment about Seagate producing in Malaysia, which didn't have floods. If it is no conspiracy, then why have Seagate disks risen by a similar amount in price and are currently still more expensive than WD disks?