Beancounters at IHS iSuppli delivered a report on memory and storage and have found that the market prices will not bounce back to pre-flood levels until 2014. Despite the fact that production is recovering fast, average selling prices will not fluctuate much until then, courtesy of the October flooding in Thailand.
HDD pricing in Q4 2011 was up 28 percent compared to Q3. Average selling price is said to have been stable throughout Q1 of 2012 and is expected to drop only slightly in Q2 2012.
Production is expected to recover completely by Q3 2012 whereas shipments seem to have just about recovered. In fact, shipments are expected to exceed pre-flood levels for the first time in Q3 2012.
It is expected however that HDD pricing will remain inflated. Analyst for storage systems Fang Zhang said that manufacturers have greater pricing power and can keep average prices. He added that large mergers of leading HDD manufacturers have resulted in significant dominance, allowing the companies to keep prices high.
To pre-flood levels
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