14 DAY TRIAL // The whole Thailand issue may have sparked fears somewhat higher than necessary, so Western Digital stepped up to the microphone and clearly said it hadn't actually stopped shipping hard disk drives.
By now, people keeping track of all the problems hammering at the hard disk drive market will know about the floods in Thailand.
In addition to the loss of life and general destruction done to settlements, the natural disaster has a rather unfortunate effect on the HDD market.
Simply put, many factories that make hard drives or HDD components had to be shut down after the waters refused to overlook them.
Western Digital was among the worst hit, since its Thai operations account for most of its worldwide shipments.
Just how badly it was doing may have been exaggerated, however, as a Taiwan-based website actually went as far as to say WD had decided to totally stop shipping HDDs to that country in November.
Now, the company itself is saying that the reports were inaccurate.
“The statements made [by the web-site] are false. We understand our customers' concerns. WD and our suppliers are significantly supply constrained,” said Heather Skinner, a spokeswoman for WD.
“Our intent is to be as balanced as possible in our approach to satisfying all of our customer's requirements, in all regions, countries and market segments.”
Of course, even if WD does continue to ship products, it is more than likely that the quantities are limited.
Meanwhile, hard disk drives in general have been getting more expensive, by 10% on average, though certain areas may see much greater hikes (or already have).
The current supply should last for the remainder of the fourth quarter, but shortages will still almost certainly plague the industry starting in Q1 2012, and, in many cases, much sooner.