Acer and Samsung warn of price increases due to Thailand floods

The floods in Thailand will cause problems for the IT industry. Samsung and Acer have said that PC supplies will be lowered and subsequently prices will rise. The shortage of hard disk drives will have ramifications globally.

Western Digital have also said that the floods have forced the closure of two of their factories in Thailand. These two factories alone account for 20% of the global drive supply. They had planned to ship 58 million drives in Q4,. but this will fall now to 22-26 million units.

Seagate have been spared from a direct hit from the floods, but there is a shortage of key parts which will reduce their output in Q4. Down from 55 million to between 40 and 50 million.

Acer say that they will have to increase PC prices to cover the higher costs for disk drives. They expect sales to be up to 10% lower than Q3 due to the floods. Drive prices have increased 20% since the flooding started.

Samsung say they will be affected by the floods also, but indirectly. They say PC sales in Q4 will be lower than predicted but it is unavoidable due to the situation in Thailand right now.

Kitguru says: We aren't sure if hard disk prices will rise in Europe due to this, but we hope Western Digital and other companies get back on track for Q1 in 2012.

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