thailand

One of the larger questions for tech companies going into fourth-quarter earnings revolved around hard drive shortages and whether the supply chain could adapt after flooding in Thailand.

Answering that question is still fairly tricky. Why? There were no uniform trends. Some companies thrived and a few struggled. Seagate was a clear winner. Western Digital held up better than expected. Meanwhile, other companies such as Sony--a financial basket case to start with--flopped.

The takeaway here is that October's severe flooding in Thailand continues to whack the technology industry. But the impact is far from uniform.

Here's a tour … Read more

Thailand has endorsed Twitter's new censorship policy to block tweets in accordance to a particular country's laws, calling it a "welcome development."

Thailand's Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Ministry said it will work with Twitter to ensure tweets disseminated in the country are in compliance with local laws, the Bangkok Post reported today.

ICT permanent secretary Jeerawan Boonperm said in the report that Twitter's move to censor content deemed offensive in particular countries was a "welcome development." She added that the ministry would soon contact the U.S.-based microblogging platform to … Read more

Nvidia has lowered revenue expectations for the period ending January 29, citing the hard disk drive shortage in Thailand.

Revenue for the fourth quarter is expected to be lower than the company's previous outlook provided with its financial results for the third quarter ended October 30, 2011, the company said this afternoon.

Revenue is now expected to be $950 million, plus or minus 1 percent, compared with original expectations of $1.066 billion, plus or minus 2 percent, provided on November 10, 2011.

"The global disk-drive shortage caused by the flooding in Thailand had more impact on the … Read more

PC shipments came in 1.4 percent lower in the fourth quarter of 2011 than in 2010 with a total of 92.2 million PC shipments worldwide, Gartner announced today.

The research company said that even though PC market growth is healthy, the fourth quarter had unusually weak holiday demand.

"While economic uncertainty in Western Europe had an effect on consumer PC shipments, expectations of a healthier economic outlook in North America could not stimulate consumer PC demand in that region," said Gartner principal analyst Gartner Mikako Kitagawa in a statement. "The healthy professional PC market as … Read more

Microsoft warned today that PC sales in the fourth quarter may be lower than analysts had previously expected due to flooding in Thailand.

While analysts had expected PC shipments to fall about 1 percent, the actual number may be lower, Microsoft Windows CFO Tami Reller said during an appearance today at the Consumer Electronics Show, according to a Bloomberg report. Reller said during a Nomura Holdings event that more downward adjustments may be coming.

That opinion was echoed at a separate event by Bill Koefoed, the general manager of Investor Relations for Microsoft.

"As the numbers come out, you'… Read more

Hard disk drive supplier Seagate Technology provided a financial update today, reiterating that demand for HDD units will exceed supply in 2012 in the wake of flooding last year in Thailand.

Seagate updated its financial outlook for fiscal second quarter 2012 on Wednesday afternoon, stating it shipped approximately 47 million disk drives, which included approximately 700,000 Samsung disk drives.

Revenue is expected to be between $3.1 billion and $3.2 billion, the company said. Analysts had projected revenue of $2.79 billion on average, according to Bloomberg. Seagate completed the acquisition of Samsung's hard disk drive business … Read more

Intel's market-moving statement today that it expects a fourth-quarter revenue shortfall of roughly $1 billion has crystallized the impact of the hard disk drive shortage. So how bad is it?

A report last week from IHS-iSuppli said it's pretty bad--a preview of what Intel said today. That is, the flooding in Thailand will hit PC shipments in the first quarter. iSuppli says the shortfall will be about 3.8 million PCs.

And it will knock down PC numbers for the whole year. Global PC shipments for the whole of 2012 are now expected to expand by only 6.… Read more

PC shipments will take a hit in the first quarter next year to the tune of about 4 million units as a result of the continuing hard-disk drive shortage, IHS-iSuppli said today.

Flooding in Thailand has wreaked havoc on hard-disk drive (HDD) supply, as manufacturers try to recover from inundated component plants. This will result in a shortfall of 3.8 million PC shipments in the first quarter of 2012, according to IHS-iSuppli.

Worldwide PC shipments in the first quarter of 2012 will amount to 84.2 million units, compared with the earlier forecast of 88 million, the market researcher … Read more

Hard disk giant Western Digital said today that it has partially restored production at a facility that had been shut down because of the flooding in Thailand.

The world's largest HDD manufacturer in terms of volume, Western Digital was one of the hardest hit by the flooding. The company has 37,000 workers in Thailand, and production in the country accounts for 60 percent of the company's total capacity, according to IHS-iSuppli.

WD restarted production of hard drives this week in one of its buildings in Bang Pa-in, Thailand, one week ahead of internal schedules, the company said. … Read more