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| Price of HDD Seagate 500Gb SATA in Pesos from 2010 - 2012 |
A Seagate 500Gb SATA HDD (Hard Disk Drive) cost P2,400 on mid 2010 and I expect that prices will go down in the succeeding years or the capacity will increase at the same price but suddenly HDD prices went up.
A Seagate 500Gb on December 2011 cost P4,200 or an increase of P1,800 or 75% from the price on 2010. Competitor Hitachi and Western Digital also shows a significant increase in their HDD prices.
What happens to the Hard Disk Drive industry? Is there a shortages of HDD or a new market strategy is emerging?
Reasons why Seagate HDD Price Became Expensive?
1. Decrease Supply - Hard disk drive and hard disk component factories in Thailand was hardly hit by series of flooding last 2011 due to heavy rain of monsoon seasons with Western Digital (WD) suffering the most.
WD, the largest producer of hard drives has 60% of global capacity based on Thailand. Seagate, the second largest manufacturer of HDD which operates multiples factories and 50% of Toshiba manufacturing capacity which are also based on Thailand was hit.
In addition, Nidec which supplies 70% of spindle motors for hard drive world wide had also factory plants flooded. With limited supply of parts ( sliders and spindle motors) and crippled supply chain HDD prices soars up high in the Philippines and worldwide.
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| Western Digital Flooding on Bang Pa-In Thailand November 2011 |
2. HDD factories are still rebuilding and will be running at full capacity in September 2012.
As of May 2012, local price of 500Gb Seagate SATA cost P3,400, a decrease of P800 or 19% in a 6 months time from December 2011. But still the HDD prices are high compared to 2010 which is P1000 or 42% higher.
The questions left are,
1. Will HDD prices return back to normal this 2012 and if not then a new price trend has emerge in the market which is good to manufacturers and
2. Will consumers move to SSD's or Magnetic Tape for other storage?
So if your planning to buy a PC or HDD today, you should better make a reconsideration because last quarter of 2012 is a good timing.
Source:
Enigma Philippines
Thailand Flooding
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