HDD supply won’t recover until Q3 2012, pricing could be inflated until 2014

The Thailand floods wrecked havoc on not only the people of Thailand, but the various tech industries, and more particular, the HDD industry. Stock levels have been tight for a while now, with inflated pricing because of the floods. Now, market research firms IHS iSuppli and Coughlin Associates are making predictions.

Those predictions are pointing toward HDD inventories not returning to normal until Q3 of this year, and pricing is not expected to go down to pre-flood levels until at least 2014. Both firms agree that the recovery of global hard disk drive manufacturing has begun, and will continue during each quarter of this year.

The demand is still continuing to out-strip supply, with inventories expected to be depleted continuously until production is back to pre-flood levels later in the year. Shipment are expected to decline by 13-percent in the first quarter of this year, and 5-percent in Q2 compared to 2011. They are expected to return to annual growth in Q3, though.

On top of this news, pricing is expected to remain inflated due to a number of reasons: higher costs associated with the relocation of production, as well as higher component costs because of the impact of the flooding on component makers, according to iSuppli.

The mergers between Seagate and Samsung, as well as Western Digital and Hitachi GST mergers, means that there is fewer competitors in the market, which provides less pressure on said competitors to drop their prices.

Coughlin believes that because of the inflated prices and changes in the market over the coming years, this should pave the way for funding expensive new technology transitions somewhere in the 2015-2016 mark. Let’s hope so!

Source: Techspot