Cautious optimism slides into reluctant pessimism yet again

Nov 29, 2011 14:34 GMT  ·  By

Companies have been playing a game of back and forth in regards to the status of the HDD market, so it was just a matter of time before the inevitable happened and optimism got replaced with pessimism. Again.

The Thai floods are old news by this point, even though the damage they caused, in terms of human life, livelihood and economy, will not be easily forgotten.

While not nearly as horrible as what happened to Japan in March, it still had a serious effect on a certain segment of IT.

Simply put, hard disk drives are entering a period of shortages that they haven't experienced before.

Or, at least, they are about to do that, contrary to what certain other reports have said.

Though prices hiked by 10 to 300% in a matter of days after the news broke of how factories had been shut down, it was implied that December would alleviate the situation.

An even more recent report than that says the precise opposite, or at least that Acer predicts gloomier things than everyone else.

Certainly, one shouldn't jump headlong into believing the rumor. That is, after all, the nature of rumors: unconfirmed and uncertain.

Still, even though PC brand vendors did their best to secure and expand alternative supply sources, the HDD supply gap will continue to widen.

During December, the percentage of shortage will be of 35%, not at all a fortuitous turn of events, especially considering the holidays.

As memory remains the most convenient purchase for this Christmas, it isn't very encouraging to see HDDs losing one of the two advantages they had left over SSDs (price, the second is capacity).

Acer already has low netbook sales to contend with, but the shortage of HDDs will lead to fewer PC sales, especially since it made it raise notebook prices by 2-3%.