14 DAY TRIAL // Since AMD recently had a financial call with analysts, it decided to say a few things about things not directly related to its business, like the the possible HDD shortage.
To provide some context, Thailand has been suffering from severe flooding which, in addition to claiming lives, severely disrupted any and all industrial activities in its path.
It was even theorized that, since the disruptions will last for more than 3 months, and with current HDD supply enough for just two, things will get strained fast.
Now, Advanced Micro Devices said some things on the matter, even if it doesn't have much bearing on it directly.
Apparently, the Sunnyvale, California-based company thinks all the concerns are a bit overblown.
“We do not see an impact in the fourth quarter, to be very honest, at least after discussing with our customers,” said Thomas Seifert, chief financial officer of Advanced Micro Devices, during a conference call with financial analysts.
“We will have to see how this is going to impact the supply chain moving forward and into 2012. It depends on a lot of things, how long this situation is going to continue, and then how much damage needs to be repaired. But in short term, not much of an impact.”
Certainly, fewer HDDs will mean fewer PCs sold which, in turn, will affect sales of all other computer parts, like graphics cards and CPUs.
AMD has its own share of shortages though, because of Globalfoundries' low 32nm process yield, so it sees this as a bigger threat that the indirect danger posed by HDDs.
“Those supply chains are quite resilient, they are working hard to work around that and make sure that the mix is there,” said Rory Read, chief executive officer of AMD.
“The feedbacks and signals that I have gotten from each of the major players is they are looking for us to improve our execution and deliver more product to them. They see opportunities to continue to deliver and execute, and the flood does not appear to be a major factor at this point. We are going to continue to monitor it, but all indications at this point that this shouldn't be a major impact.”