By Ramdas S, CRN, January 13, 2012, 1030 hrs
System builders, component makers and distributors feel that the white box PC market was affected by the HDD shortage and the spike in price of disk drives during Q4 2011. The impact is estimated to be in the range of 10-15 percent, and retailers say that many traditional assembled PC buyers are opting for branded desktops and laptops.
“There is no denying the fact that the market is affected by the disk drive shortage. We saw business being affected by around 15 percent,” said Vinay Shetty, Country Head, Component Business, Asus Technology.
“HDD price hike has caused an immediate effect on the assembled PC price, and this would naturally reduce price advantages offered by the system builders,” agreed Sunil Grewal, Country Manager, Gigabyte India.
Meanwhile, HDD prices remained stagnant with internal 500 GB SATA selling at Rs 4,300, the internal 1 TB SATA starting at Rs 5,600 or so, while prices of various models of 2 TB ranged from Rs 7,000 to Rs 9,000 during first week of January. The disk drive shortage was triggered following intense flash floods that brought the manufacturing industry in Thailand to a stand-still. Thailand accounts for nearly 40 percent production of disk drives.
“We have seen component sales dip by about 20 percent, and retailers who used to sell assembled computers, are keener to order branded desktops and laptops,” said Sampath Kumar, CEO, Positive Systems, Kochi.
While on an average the prices of assembled desktops have shot up by almost Rs 4,000, the MNC PC makers seemed to have been less impacted. “Average price hike, where the dollar price appreciation need to be taken into account, for an MNC PC desktop is definitely lesser compared to a similarly configured assembled desktop, and hence the delta between a white box PC and a branded PC has become lesser,” points out Mohan Reddy, Proprietor, Mohan Computers, Bengaluru. Reddy said that he has started selling Acer desktops since the costs are similar. |