“Apple is relatively unscathed by the recent Thailand flooding which threw for a loop PC makers more dependent on hard drives,” Ed Sutherland reports for Cult of Mac.
“Intel stock dropped 4.8 percent earlier this week on word sales by the giant chipmaker would be down until at least through the first quarter of the 2012 financial year. PC makers have been rushing to buy up scarce hard drive supplies after the July Thailand flooding,” Sutherland reports. “Thailand is the No. 2 global producer of hard drives.”
Sutherland reports, “‘We think Apple will be the least impacted … if at all, given its ability to sell MacBook Airs and iPads,’ Barclays Capital analyst Ben Reitzes noted Tuesday night. PC sales in the fourth quarter are forecast to grow by only 4 percent, with 3.6 percent annual growth predicted for the first quarter of fiscal 2012.”
Read more in the full article here.
Sometimes, events make me believe Steve Jobs had gotten hold of a history-book from the future.
You can’t be _that_ lucky.
Apple secures parts in advance using its cash position. If anything gets scarce they are assured to get the said resource with priority and better price. They do that systematically with all parts. No need for luck when you have tons of cash, smart people and a well oiled organization. Of course they are not immune to everything, but they are as close to as humanly possible, much better than any competitor.
So you’re saying that Jobs didn’t receive a copy of “Grey’s Sports Almanac” from his future self?
Only a butthead would give something like that away.
Then why does it currently take over a month to get an iMac with a 2TB drive? ETAs were 6-8 weeks a while back.
Why as a reseller (ordering from Apple) are we looking at ETA times of over 1 month on 17″ MBPs and and 15″ high end MBPs with 750 GB hard drives?
Apple can have all the money in the world and be “better than the competitor”, but if the parts don’t exist, you can’t get them.
Distributors have hiked up the price of hard drives because they are suddenly scarce. If you’re working with razor thin margins, the extra cost makes a big difference. On the other hand, Apple’s margins are sufficiently large that they can pay higher prices in the short term in order to keep satisfying demand for those Macs that use hard drives.
That’s what happens when you skate to where the puck is going.
Hmm, I don’t think that’s it. A natural disaster like that could’ve just as easily affected flash memory plants – and then you’d be singing a different tune.
But we’re NOT singing that different tune, are we? If “ifs and but’s” were candy and nuts, we would all have a Merry Christmas! And we most certainly WILL, thanks to Apple Inc.
I’m glad I bought a 2TB Hitachi drive, for use in external enclosure (with Time Machine), a few months ago. It cost me $70 (with promotional free shipping and $10 discount), at Newegg.com. Now, the same drive costs $150 (no free shipping).
The 4% is misleading!!!
“PC sales in the fourth quarter are forecast to grow by only 4 percent”
The Mac is about 28% growth and has 10 to 15% market share. Do the math, THE NON-MAC PC GROWTH HAS BEEN NEGATIVE FOR SEVERAL QUARTERS NOW! It is ONLY the Mac growth that gives the total PC market a positive growth number at this time.