The availability of hard drives is set to be short by 35% in the final three months of 2011. While this is lower than original estimations Taiwanese tech site Digitimes sources predict this will equate to production levels around 110-130 million units, compared with the demand for 180 million drives.
The recent floods in Thailand continue to cause havoc on the supply of hard disk components, which has seen global shortages and prices increasing by as much as 600% on some drives.
Predictions for the start of 2012 are mixed, although everyone has to hold some hope that the shortages will ease in Q1. Many predictions suggest that the shortages won’t ease until the middle of 2012 and that the hard drive industry could take up to two years before normal production is completely restored.
