Dell Has HDD Supply Issues Like Everyone Else

Dell had to get creative when word came in about how, soon enough, there won't be many hard disk drives to go about, but it apparently didn't get away scot-free.

While it was able to act quickly form the start, even before the biggest price jumps came, but the recent conference call with financial analysts suggested it might not have been enough.

For those who need an update, Thailand, the country where most of the HDD and HDD component factories reside, was and still is flooded severely.

This effectively crippled the market segment, causing big supply concerns and leading to price hikes of 10% to even 100%.

That doesn't mean PC suppliers and HDD companies themselves aren't doing everything they can to deal with the situation, of course.

By forming special teams, Dell pulled in systems form its hubs and also acquired 'strategic quantities' of drives as fast as it could.

Nonetheless, Dell expects to have shortage problems until the end of the first half of 2012, though their severity is still unclear.

“Last month, we made strategic purchases of inventory and pulled in supply from our hubs. This drove an increase in our end-of-quarter DSI. We also have teams working with the impacted suppliers to manage our hard drive supply chain and qualify new sources of supply. Our goal is to mitigate any impact to our customers in Dell, and our teams will be working throughout the quarter to do just that,” said Jeffrey Clarke, vice chairman of operations and technology.

If this flood-induced shortage situation had not come to pass, we might have had a harder time deciding whether it was more convenient to buy a new HDD or a memory unit for Christmas.

In the end, though, we reached the conclusion that DDR3 really was the most convenient buy these holidays, IT-wise at least.