14 DAY TRIAL // We already mentioned, repeatedly, that the hard disk drive market was about to smash into a wall, so to speak, and now we have some actual estimates of how badly prices and sales will suffer.
Though it won't be enough to make people switch to SSDs, selling prices of HDDs will go up by 10% before 2011 is over.
Shipments will decline by 27.7% on-quarter, from 173 to 125 million, as 30% of the HDD production of the October-December period will be lost because of the Thailand flooding disaster.
Notebooks will suffer the most from all this, having become the primary branch of the PC market.
The supply chain is only expected to truly start adjusting to the setback in the second quarter of 2012, so the troubles will last for about six months.