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Updated Sunday, October 30, 2011 9:48 pm TWN, By Chris Lefkow ,AFP

Flooding disrupts 25 percent of world's hard drive supplies

WASHINGTON -- The massive flooding in Thailand is disrupting supplies of hard disk drives (HDDs) for the world's personal computer makers, according to companies and market intelligence firms.

Around 40 percent of all hard disk drives worldwide are produced in Thailand, making it the second-largest exporter of HDDs after China.

John Rydning, research vice president for hard disk drives at technology consultant IDC, estimated that factories in Thailand currently affected by flooding account for some 25 percent of worldwide HDD production.

“There's definitely going to be an impact on HDD customers this quarter and next quarter,” Rydning told AFP on Friday. “It's going to take several months for the HDD industry to recover.”

Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook told financial analysts last week he was “virtually certain” that the flooding in Thailand would lead to an overall industry shortage of hard disk drives.

“Like many others, we source many components from Thailand,” Cook said during the quarterly earnings call for the manufacturer of the Macintosh computer line.

“There are several factories that are currently not operable and the recovery timeline for these factories is not known at this point,” he said.

“It is something that I'm concerned about,” Cook said. “How it affects Apple, I'm not sure.”

Fang Zhang, an analyst for storage systems at market intelligence and technology consultant IHS iSuppli Corp., said the flooding could cause a 30-percent drop in HDD production in the fourth quarter of the year.

Fang said in a statement that the floods could potentially lead to an HDD supply shortage this quarter that may last into the first quarter of next year.

Before the disaster, IHS iSuppli had forecast production of 176.2 million hard drives during the fourth quarter.

IDC's Rydning stressed that not all of the HDD production in Thailand is being affected by the flooding and said the impact “is mitigated somewhat by HDD inventory that existed entering the flood period.”

“Those inventories will help to satisfy some of the HDD requirements of major customers,” he said. “But we expect that any inventory available will be depleted, probably in the month of November.”

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