Intel has cut its Q4 forecasts because of the ongoing shortages of hard disc drives caused by the Thai floods warning investors it will miss the numbers it had previously been aiming for.
The impact of the floods is now expected to take revenue down to about $13.7bn when the markets had been braced to get $14.65bn before shortages started to take their toll.
“Sales of personal computers are expected to be up sequentially in the fourth quarter. However, the worldwide PC supply chain is reducing inventories and microprocessor purchases as a result of hard disk drive supply shortages.
The company expects hard disk drive supply shortages to continue into the first quarter, followed by a rebuilding of microprocessor inventories as supplies of hard disk drives recover during the first half of 2012,” stated the vendor.
According to the latest research from IHS iSuppli the HDD shortages will lead to close to a four million unit shortfall in PC shipments in the first quarter of next year.
“The PC supply chain says it has sufficient HDD inventory for the fourth quarter of 2011. However, those stockpiles will run out ion the first quarter of 2012, impacting PC production during that period,” said Matthew Wilkins, senior principal analyst, compute platforms for IHS.
Although the situation will improve in the first quarter of next year the analyst house is warning that it will take time to filter through to the supply chain and it will only be the third quarter when things get back to normal.