Intel Revenue Dives $1bn On Hard Disk Shortage 198
nk497 writes "The hard disk shortage caused by the flooding in Thailand will cost Intel $1 billion in lost revenue, the company said. It had initially predicted revenue of $14.7bn this quarter, but that will now be $13.7bn, it said. 'Sales of personal computers are expected to be up sequentially in the fourth quarter,' Intel said. 'However, the worldwide PC supply chain is reducing inventories and microprocessor purchases as a result of hard disk drive supply shortages.'"
SSD (Score:5, Insightful)
The perfect time for Intel to push SSDs?
Re:SSD (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, as soon as they come up with $100 1TB SSDs.
SSDs are fine for OS disks and applications, but for anything requiring serious data storage, they're just too small and expensive. Lots of people these days use their computers for storing and watching movies; you need terabyte hard drives for that.
Re:Revenue? (Score:5, Insightful)
In a capitalist system, that's not theft. If the price is agreed to by all involved parties then it's fair.
A company may boost it's profits for any number of reasons, not all of which are driven by pure greed - bankrolling some money for future growth being the obvious one. Or would you prefer that companies grow by borrowing, which involves usury (which, by your too-much-profit principle, may be a more pernicious form of theft)?
Re:SSD (Score:5, Insightful)
The real problem here is that there is a large gap between what the two types of drives (cheaply) hold and"normal users" are likely to fall somewhere in between.
You don't need to be a video hoarder to run out of space on a smaller drive. You just need to use your machine for more than a web terminal. If you are a producer or consumer of anything, all of the stuff together will likely exceed the capacity of a smaller SSD drive.
It's not just one thing but a combination of things that could push you over the rather meagre 120G you are likely to find on a cheap-enough SSD.
Beyond that, things tend to get expensive quick.
At that point, an oversized and somewhat overpriced HDD is still cheaper.
Re:Revenue? (Score:2, Insightful)
Profit beyond that which is necessary to cover risk (unfortunate troubles) is theft
Really? Tell you what you swing by my house I will pay you only in your material cost to paint my house. You dont deserve anything beyond that. It would just be you stealing from me. You may be a bit angry at this point at what I said. But it is the logical extreme of what you are saying.
You know what those profits pay for? Expansion, peoples salaries, bonuses, dividends, new product lines, R&D, etc... Multi billion dollar fabrication plants do not build themselves.
Or to take my painting example. I am willing to pay someone money to do it for me. Why? I *really* do not like to do it. It is worth it to me to work on something else I enjoy and give someone else the money to do it. Even if it costs me quite a bit more than if I do it myself.
If you dont see that as good, then you know what keep your mouth shut. As you have no idea how the real world really works. When you get out of your parents basement and realize money is earned not some magical thing that your parents give you, you will start to realize this. People do things for selfish reasons. For example in my painting example. I am taking advantage of someone else to do grunt work I do not like. They are getting something in return... money. They in turn take advantage of me by charging for it. I get a house painted they get money. However, you seem to be under the impression people should not be compensated for what they do. You will find very few people willing to work that way.
Lies, D*mned Lies, and... (Score:5, Insightful)
The loss seems all big and impressive and such until you actually bother to look at both numbers and realize that it really isn't so bad after all. What this really goes to show just how BIG the PC business is and how a relatively small setback can be portrayed as this dire tragedy.
Re:Revenue? (Score:2, Insightful)
Given inflation, a company that isn't showing at least a couple of percent growth is, in fact, dying.
Re:Revenue? (Score:3, Insightful)
Take advantage (Score:3, Insightful)
IMHO: I'm surprised that SSD manufacturers are not taking advantage of the HDD shortage and giving deals left and right. Intel could profit greatly right now lowering their SSD prices just slightly. PC manufacturers will benefit by selling computers and the end user will get that "speedy" system for only a slight increase in price. The higher price will definitely pay for itself considering the boot and operating speed of a SSD over HDD. Granted that's with the consideration you didn't buy a system with 1GB of memory and a Celeron proc running Win7.
Obviously anyone looking for large capacity drives is still SOL. I know some local stores in the area are still selling drives for reasonable prices until they run out. I doubt they'll bother to stock some or any at all after that. I'm sure they don't want to be left holding $2-300 drives that will be selling for at least half that a couple months from now.
On another note, who had the bright idea of creating a single point of failure? I wonder if WD, Seagate, etc setup their networks all with single points of failure. I understand it's cheaper but if you can't make drives, you're not making money.
Re:Intel sells hard drives? (Score:5, Insightful)
Or, and potentially just as bad for Intel, they're using a lower-speced and likely lower margin CPU to make up some of the cost difference due to the HDD.
Re:Revenue? (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh please, what an utterly stupid attitude. Not all companies are tech companies. If the makers of Twinkies find their company isn't growing, what exactly is the problem as long as they're profitable and their workers are well-paid (and presumably their executives too)? There's only so many Twinkies you can sell; people aren't going to abandon all other foods and only eat Twinkies (and even if they did, eventually your company's growth would then be tied to the population growth rate). You don't need to move into new areas; there's already other companies selling other types of food, so they're probably going to do better at it than you are since they've been doing it longer and have a brand reputation in those areas, whereas you have a brand reputation for unhealthy junk food, so you're not likely to find much success moving into, say, high-priced organic snack foods compared to the companies already competing in that space. Twinkies have been around forever, they're not going anywhere, so even if the Twinkie company stops growing, that doesn't mean it's dying, it means it's reached a plateau.
There's tons of small companies that have been around for many years (or decades, or even longer), that haven't grown because they don't need to or want to grow. As long as the owners are happy with the profit they're making, why would they want to make the company bigger, and have to deal with all the headaches that come with having a bigger operation and more shareholders yelling about how they want to do things?
(re)location (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Revenue? (Score:4, Insightful)
Amateur. First you cut R&D, that's long term. Then you cut the engineers, that's mid term. Then you cut support/service, which is short term. Then you bail for a competing company so you're forced to sell your options and shares. As it crash and burns, paint yourself as the great CEO that was the only thing holding that company together. Do it with enough confidence and they won't see you were the one tearing it apart. Non-sociopaths tend to believe sociopaths because they themselves couldn't pull off such a baldfaced lie. That's how they get to hop from one top position to the next...