The devastating flood in Thailand that stalled a significant proportion of the world's hard disk manufacturing capacity is expected to hurt consumers the most, followed by laptop makers. According to iSuppli, disk drive shipments are expected to dip by 28 percent in Q4, or about 48 million fewer units compared with the same time last year.

End-users can hence expect to see price increases for hard disk drives, which include USB-based portable hard disk drives. Analysts say this will be exacerbated by disk drive makers trying to keep their largest customers, computer system manufactures, happy. Moreover, a report on Forbes noted that laptop PCs are likely to be hit hard too, given that the plants knocked out specialize in the 2.5-inch disks used in most laptops.

Logic dictates that globalization should have prevented such a situation from ever occurring. However, economies of scale have meant that hard disk makers can churn out hard disk drives far cheaper in the millions than manufacturing them at lower quantities. The result is just seven companies making HDDs, with "only 3 or 4 that really matter," observed Tim Worstall in the Forbes article. It is understood that Thailand had also offered large tax breaks to attract HDD makers.

For more on this story:
- check out this article at Computerworld
- check out this article at Forbes
- check out this article at The Washington Post

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