14 DAY TRIAL // After the NAND memory crash down from Samsung, when the manufacturer ceased production for a few hours because of a power leakage at one of its production facilities in Korea, it looks as if the hard disk drive market is next on the list of disasters just waiting to happen. Hard disk drives inventories are running low and the most affected models are those with 80GB or 160GB of storage capacity.
According to the Korean news site ETNews, there is a crisis of small to medium capacity hard disk drives as the demand for parts needed by portable devices increased and a number of Japanese manufacturers decided to recall some models or postpone the launch date of new models due to technological problems. As the 80GB to 160GB hard disk drives are getting scarcer on the market their price goes up, having climbed already by 10 percent. Total demand of hard drives for end customers and users is estimated at about 13 million units, while the industry - both manufacturers and vendors - are having a hard time finding an additional 1.95 million or 15 percent HDDs to cover the market. The main problem is that with a new quarter coming up and the Christmas just around the corner, manufacturers are pressured to keep up with the demand while vendors are depleting their stocks at a very fast rate.
A number of well-known hard disk drive manufacturers are having problems ramming up production because of a series of earthquakes in Hokkaido and Nikata, Japan. Among the affected HDD producers there are Hitachi GST and Western Digital. Hitachi was usually supplying over a quarter of a million of units per month to both end users and system integrators and the like, while Western Digital as a major supplier for Samsung and other PC manufacturers is in a similar position.
Shin Dong-min, president of Hitachi GST, said, "Although we make orders to the main office in Japan, it is hard to supply products because only a limited amount is assigned to the Korean office." The situation is not better for the Korean division of Wester Digital as its president said that "We've already received orders for the third quarters. The supply has been sluggish since July, and the situation is most serious for 2.5 inch HDD. But we expect that the prices will go up for all products when the new semester and holiday season begin". As the mobile 2.5 inch hard disk drive units are in very high demand and low available quantity, their price already increased by 10 percent.