Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo, Dell and Microsoft are among companies that may be hurt in the current quarter and into 2012 as flooding in Thailand strains personal-computer supplies and raises prices, according to a new IDC report.
IDC predicts PC shipments will decline between 2.2 percent and 3.4 percent in the fourth quarter from a year earlier. And they could drop as much as another 13 percent in Q1 2012, the researcher said.
Rising waters have swamped industrial parks in Thailand where companies like Western Digital and Toshiba make about a quarter of the world’s disk drives – just at a time when the PC industry would normally be in peak production for the coming Christmas-New year sales period.
“A lot of these plants are still under water, and it’s unclear how much damage they will find when the water recedes,” IDC analyst Loren Loverde told Bloomberg. “It’s also unclear how quickly the clean-up can begin and how much time it will take to bring in replacement parts to rebuild.”
The flood has caused drive prices to increase by $10 to $25 and they could rise further, Seagate CEO Steve Luczo said. “If you’re thinking of buying someone a laptop for Christmas, I’d buy it now. ”
