14 DAY TRIAL // Back in April, Western Digital said that hard disk drive shipments would go back to pre-flood levels, more or less, by June.
We have to admit that this prediction did come true, to a moderate extent. Unfortunately, it only makes the situation more disappointing, if not frustrating, for the common man.
And we don't just say this because of the huge profits that Seagate and Western Digital raked in.
Misgivings stem from the fact that, even with HDD shipments more or less sufficient, prices still aren't going down to what they used to be.
Sure, HDDs no longer sell for 300% of the pre-flood levels, but they are still overpriced, due to the long-term contracts signed with manufacturers right after the event, and which locked the prices at 120%, on average.
Analysts are ready to crush our hopes a little further. They believe that normal prices won't be attained before 2014.
Ironically, this made Western Digital's projection the optimistic one. WD said that things would recover fully by 2013.
"There are a lot of added costs right now," WD's Ian Keene, European Sales director, told The Register. "WD spent a lot of money on capital damage, running (under-utilised) factories that still paid people and mitigating risks of (future) floods."