Aaron Lee, Taipei; Adam Hwang

 

The global ODM supply of PCs, due to short supply of hard disk drives (HDDs) arising from the flooding in Thailand, may be short of demand by 10% in December 2011 and the first quarter of 2012, according to PC vendors including Hewlett-Packard, Dell and Acer.

Vendors have HDD inventories for four weeks, while ODMs have one-week inventories, and HDDs in shipping are estimated at one week of inventory, resulting in a total inventory level for 4-6 weeks which is enough to support PC shipments in November, the sources said.

Vendors have given first priority to more profitable PC models and Taiwan-based ODMs will stop production of less profitable models, according to the ODMs. HDD suppliers expect their shipments in the first quarter of 2012 to decrease 40-50% and factories impacted by flooding in Thailand will resume normal production in February-March at the earliest, ODMs indicated.