Thailand Flooding, Supply "Hard Disk" Distracted World

Floods that have occurred since mid-July in Thailand brought a significant impact on the world computer industry, especially for notebook and desktop PC products. Thailand's worst floods for 50 years has forced the closure of hundreds of factories around the city of Bangkok.

According to analysis Data Corp., of hundreds of factories are some of them producing one third of the total production of hard disks in the country, or about 120 million units of hard disk per year. Thailand, according to market analyst firm, iSuppli, generates about a quarter of total world production of hard disks.

Major hardware vendors like Dell and HP off to find an alternative production site to prevent delays supply of their products. Other vendors such as Apple says, closing factories and supply disruptions hard disk is a very significant impact on the production and availability of Apple's desktop computers and laptops.

Earlier this week, Apple CEO Tim Cook said, "Almost certainly this shortage of supply of the hard disk will affect the industry as a whole."

Disruption and delay in supply of this hard disk will continue until July next year, says one analyst at Gartner, although it is still too early to predict its impact in the future.

Manufacturers of hard disk directly affected by this flooding are Western Digital, Toshiba, Seagate, and Samsung. Western Digital as the maker of the world's largest hard disk has about 37,000 employees in Thailand and temporarily had to stop production, according to iSuppli. The company produced 53.8 million units of hard disk in the second quarter of this year, representing 32 percent global market share. Toshiba, a supplier of hard disk is ranked fourth, has recently also been stopped production.