There has been another development in our ongoing coverage regarding how the flooding in Thailand has been affecting the hard drive industry. With the waters receding and the supply chains starting to open back up, the prices on drives have started to level off. We were expecting them to return to pre-flood pricing somewhere around the middle of 2012.
However, widespread migrant workers strikes in China may now cause another blip in the overall availability of completed drives.
There is a chance that these strikes may cause another, short-term, constraint on drive supply due to slowed production and unavailability of components as a result of the strikes. While this may or may not affect drive costs in the near future, we’re still optimistic for the return to normal by summer.
For further reading on the strikes themselves we suggest the following articles:
- Chinese factories hit by strikes amid manufacturing slowdown
- Can China keep its workers happy as strikes and protests rise?
- Nearly 1,000 Workers Strike at Hitachi GST in Shenzhen
As always, OWC is working hard to ensure inventory of all types of storage devices, price them competitively to prevailing market conditions, and keep you abreast of the trends to help with your purchase decisions.
Heres a novel idea, how about manufacturing here in the US. This way we put American workers to work and get a quality product. The US isn’t as susceptible to monsoons and you don’t have to worry about strikes if you don’t open a union shop. I like your products but would rather see jobs here vs jobs there.
I love that idea! But the powers that be hate it. Time to fire the powers that be.
Maybe its too late for this now, as SSDs are eventually going to take over …. but I wish there was a U.S. based mechanical HDD manufacture that could compete with the prices offered by the over seas brands. Then none of this would have been an issue. Nice to know that OWC’s SSDs are all made here!
This just in, Godzilla may strike downtown Tokyo. IF that happens, there could be a hard drive shortage. Soooo, if your looking we do just happen to sell hard drives, although we only have one or two left (cause of the shortage ya know), so you should buy them now…while they are more expensive…cause Godzilla could strike.
More live OWC coverage of the Thailand ultra mega super sized disaster after the break. (Yeah, the breaks a commercial for OWC)…
Just think, if you could have gotten a Thunderbolt product out by now (even a freaking dongle!) you’d actually have something to talk about in this blog.
Aw man whoda…what about the season of “goodwill towards man?” These developments were certainly not FUD….many I’ve talked to didn’t know about issues until they went to price drives…and boy, did they realize the impact then. Let’s face it….people need storage for their digital device life like they need oil for their transportation. So when something may affect the supply and/or pricing, we think its important to let folk know the news, how it might affect them, and thoughts on what they should do. And the TB stuff…there is kinda a reason why very little out on market. Let’s just see how 2012 shapes up when it comes to interfaces and development/usage of such
Instead of rebuilding the flooded factories to restart making of HHD’s why not retool those factories to increase the production of SSD’s??? Why spend money on restarting those outdated and basically obsolete HHD factories making obsolete tech. Update them to make the SSD.