A severe monsoon season in Thailand, which triggered massive flooding and that started in July and continues to a lesser degree this month (December), is impacting availability and pricing of hard disk drive (HDD) components inside security video storage and retrieval systems. Depending on the country of origin of the devices, the fallout is lack of availability of some product from security manufacturers and price increases.
Based on interviews by Today’s System Integrator, the crunch may at least last through April 2012 and the price increases, well, could be more lasting, maybe even ever-lasting.As of December 3, some areas in Thailand still remained under up to six feet of water and many factory areas remained closed. As for the price rises, the flooding has affected the entire hard drive industry. Western Digital, a major producer, said it expects industry shipments in the December quarter to be limited to 120 million units while demand will be for 170 million to 180 million units. “The company believes that significant industry supply constraints will continue in the March quarter and beyond,” according to a company statement.