News - Hard-disk prices soon to return to normality

[HEXUS]

Retailers claim prices will begin drop during December.

Read more.

[crossy]

Good news, I'm waiting for the price of large (1TB+) USB-powered drives to drop to reasonable levels so I can setup some offsite backups for the various laptops and netbooks in the house.

[Nikumba]

And I need the 2Tb F4's to come back down in price as I need to expand my NAS

Plus I really hate how online sites price gouged like petrol stations did

Kimbie

[HalloweenJack]

now heres a question - if supplies havent been effected , can retailiers be fined for price gouging?

[Hoonigan]

How quickly are prices expected to fall then? And when are the plants due to reopen and start producing again?

with per-gigabyte cost dropping to $1.20.

I thought this was a British site.... I really dislike British sites using American ways of doing things.

[shaithis]

I am not sure if WD will bounce back as fast...

http://www.channelregister.co.uk/201..._half_billion/

[abaxas]

now heres a question - if supplies havent been effected , can retailiers be fined for price gouging?

The retailer defines the price, you decide if you wish to pay it.

[Millennium]

Good news for the PC hardware industry, probably bad news for ISPs!
but they can afford it...

[semo]

The retailer defines the price, you decide if you wish to pay it.

Agreed. I think retailers would be in trouble if they talked to each other and set a common price

Ebuyer was asking for about £200 for a TB drive at one point but I think prices settled in part due to consumers opting for SSDs or holding back rather buying over priced HDDs. Would be useful if we could find sales figures of SSDs during the flooding period...

[Scribe]

How quickly are prices expected to fall then? And when are the plants due to reopen and start producing again?



I thought this was a British site.... I really dislike British sites using American ways of doing things.

This figure is based on a report from OCZ, which shows the price-point of soon-to-be-released SSDs that offer a good performance vs cost ratio appropriate for the news item, however, as these devices are unreleased, we didn't feel comfortable making the conversion just yet as it may have rang untrue in reality.

[Saracen]

How quickly are prices expected to fall then? And when are the plants due to reopen and start producing again?



I thought this was a British site.... I really dislike British sites using American ways of doing things.

It is a British site, but unsurprisingly, most computer components, and the sub-components they're made from, aren't UK-based. An awful lot of international trade is priced in dollars, for obvious reasons.

Of course, a standard exchange rate could be applied, but it could be very misleading as different importers apply different pricing structures in different regions, so the rate used by one supplier may be very different to that used by another, and you only have top look at the differences in some products between US retail pricing and UK pricing, even allowing for import duty and VAT, to see the effect.

To get a credible comparison over time, you really have to use the commodity pricing, and that's in dollars, otherwise you're not tracking changes in component prices but in exchange rates and supplier pricing policy.


Note: This is a personal view, not a HEXUS one. I have no knowledge of or input into article production, and am no more involved with or knowledgeable of that process than any other member.

[Saracen]

This might work out well for buyers. If retailers have built large stocks in anticipation of prices continuing to rise, we may even get a price war as they struggle to dump stock before prices drop below what they paid and competitive pressures force them to sell at what may be below cost. Of course, without knowing what stock levels are, and what cost prices were, this is mere speculation. And I don't know. But it's feasible that if they jacked prices to deter purchase in anticipation of a long, dry spell, and now it;s perhaps starting to rain drives, we may get a consumer bonus. It's certainly worth keeping our eyes open.

Oh, and one more thought. This could become a stand-off.

I know quite a few people that were about to buy, but held off because prices had jumped. Now, there's a likelihood that even more will hold off, until prices drop. The more news like this spreads, the more pressure there is on retailers to .... erm .... be 'competitive'.

So my advice to anyone thinking of buying is .... unless you really have to buy and do it now, wait!

[Hoonigan]

My reasoning for my comment about the pricing being in Dollars and not Pounds, was because I believed they were using dollars for no reason other than, because they can..

We're often seeing SSDs for the £1/GB price range, which is why I'd expect Hexus to use the Pound instead of the Dollar.

If your source is from OCZ and they've stated the price in Dollars then I suppose you'll have to go with that.

[Saracen]

My reasoning for my comment about the pricing being in Dollars and not Pounds, was because I believed they were using dollars for no reason other than, because they can..

We're often seeing SSDs for the £1/GB price range, which is why I'd expect Hexus to use the Pound instead of the Dollar.

If your source is from OCZ and they've stated the price in Dollars then I suppose you'll have to go with that.

Yup, and understood. It's irritating, isn't it? Nonetheless, sometimes it's for a good reason. I've nothing to do with this story, but I've been in this position in the past.

For instance, Intel releases a new CPU range and you're reviewing them. Intel provide the chips for test, and basic information, which will probably include the chip price, in dollars, in units of 1000. As an English site, magazine or newspaper, you can guesstimate the final single-unit street price if you dare, but the only actual information you have of what prices will be, in a few weeks or months when they're released, is the trade dollar price. If I guess at street price, I;m taking a punt on both channel margins and the exchange rate changes in the intervening period., And right now, I sure as hell wouldn't want to predict the latter.

Also, a lot of stuff that comes into the UK comes via a channel route that takes it into the EU in dollars, and from the EU in Euros. So now, you not only need to predict the dollar/euro exchange rate, but the pound/euro rate as well.

I know dollar prices are irritating, but sometimes, they're unavoidable at a practical level.

[Steve]

I do some research at a UK based company. Component pricing is quite often uttered in dollars. Also we have a large global reader base. So not only does it make sense for components to be traded in dollars. It makes sense for us to talk about them in dollars, particularly when we don't want to muddy the waters with uncertain exchange rates and projected figures.

[Funkstar]

Adding to what Steve said, commodities are priced in USD on the open market. Hard drives are an openly traded commodity, so it isn't a surprise they are quoted in USD.

The BBC will always quote gold and crude oil price in USD as that is what they are traded in.