Hard drive shortage, price hike imminent?

Tales of hard drive/memory shortages aren't unusual (emphasis on the word "tales"), so you can't blame us for only being mildly concerned by the latest reports out of South Korea. According to Korean blog ETNews, hard drive production in the far East is currently falling below demand. ETNews blames the production shortage on increased demand from OEM vendors of portable media players and GPS navigators, as well as recent earthquakes in Japan which have caused hard drive production to fall below estimates. According to the article, this shortfall has already caused an increase in the price of 80GB and 160GB drives in Korea and an overall price increase of around 10 percent. It remains to be seen whether a similar price hike will make its way over to our shores anytime soon; for now we'll all just have to wait and see.

For more on the reported shortages:
- see this ETNews article

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