Western Digital restarts hard disk production

Western Digital Scorpio mobile HDD.

(Credit: Western Digital)

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.

"This facility had been submerged in some six feet of water since October 15, the estate was pumped dry on November 17, main power was restored on November 26 and production restarted November 30," according to a statement.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.

WD went on to say that it expects to begin head slider production (the slider allows the HDD's head to maintain a consistent flying height above the disk) in Bang Pa-in during the March 2012 quarter and also begin production at a new slider fabrication facility in Penang, Malaysia, in the same timeframe.

Other facilities in Thailand, however--at Navanakorn--remain under two feet of water. Those facilities are expected to be pumped dry within 10 days, then decontamination and refurbishment will begin, WD said.

For the industry as a whole, WD expects that hard drive shipments in the December quarter will be limited to approximately 120 million units, including units that were in inventory at the beginning of the quarter. Demand for the December quarter is in the range of 170 million to 180 million units. WD "believes that significant industry supply constraints will continue in the March quarter and beyond."

For the December quarter, the company expects revenue of at least $1.8 billion and gross margins above the high end of its business model range of 18 percent to 23 percent. Unusual charges related to the floods are expected to be in the range of $225 million to $275 million for the December quarter, exclusive of any insurance recovery, the company said.

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MacBook Air, Ultrabook spell doom for optical drive

HP's new 13-inch Folio Ultrabook. As with the MacBook Air, a built-in optical drive is not an option.

(Credit: Hewlett-Packard)

With Apple likely forgoing optical drives across all or most of its MacBooks, and Ultrabooks doing the same, it's no surprise that the venerable whirring drive will spin away, albeit gradually, into obscurity.

Next to go driveless at Apple is the 15-inch MacBook Air. 9to5Mac says Apple almost brought out a 15-inch Air in late 2010 (but didn't because of a problem with the hinges). Apple now has plans to make this happen next year when Intel's graphics-centric Ivy Bridge processor ships.

Ultrabooks will do their part to hurry the otherwise slow demise of the optical drive. As many as 50 Ultrabooks are expected to debut at CES this year, and all of them will come without the drives, since by definition the design cannot accommodate the bulk of an optical drive.

Optical drives would have faded even more quickly if it wasn't for the dreaded focus group. PC makers like Dell, Hewlett-Packard, and Toshiba almost always test their design concepts with focus groups, who almost always say something to the effect of: "yeah, why not throw in an optical drive just in case." So PC makers have inevitably done that in the past.

Apple is different. The Apple of Steve Jobs held focus groups in contempt. In essence, Jobs believed consumers don't know what they want until you give it to them. So, present them with a MacBook Air--as Apple did in January 2008--and consumers will eventually come around.

Which they did. But this time it's not just consumers but the whole PC industry. And Intel--the real force behind Ultrabooks--has adopted Jobsian thinking to drive the market to these skinny laptops. "We are not waiting for this to happen. We're going to create the future, and that's fundamentally what this transition is all about," Erik Reid, a manager at Intel in charge of the Ultrabook platform, said this week.

But for readers who are feeling the hackles rising on the back of their neck as they read this, no need to worry. Consumers will always be able to waltz into a Best Buy and find an inexpensive laptop with an optical drive. And PC makers will continue to sell plenty of models with DVD/RW and Blu-ray players. It's just that more and more people will be buying laptops (and/or tablets) sans optical drive, blissfully unaware or unconcerned that it's missing.

Related articles

• MacBook Air, Ultrabook spell doom for optical drive (news.cnet.com)

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Oracle: Reports of Itanium's life greatly exaggerated

A wafer of Itanium 9300 processors.

(Credit: Intel)

Oracle filed court papers this week alleging that a "secret" deal between Itanium developers HP and Intel is the only reason for the continued existence of the chip--for which the business-software giant is ending its support.

"HP has secretly contracted with Intel to keep churning out Itaniums so that HP can maintain the appearance that a dead microprocessor is still alive," reads the filing, which All Things Digital's Arik Hesseldahl describes as a routine affair about the discovery process and timing in HP's lawsuit against Oracle for dropping the chip.

HP alleges that Oracle's motivation for ending Itanium support is the latter company's acquisition of Sun Microsystems and its server business, which relies on Intel x86 chips. Oracle, HP claims, is simply trying to convince Itanium customers that the chip isn't long for this world and to get them to switch to x86-based servers like Sun's.

Oracle, on the other hand, says HP's desire to keep customers on Itanium is based on the fact that the Itanium-reliant HP UX operating system commands more in service fees than would a system based on x86 chips. This "led HP to craft a top-secret plan to create a false perception that Itanium still had a future," Hesseldahl quotes the Oracle filing as saying. "HP understands that the future prospects of IT products drive customer purchasing decisions. A buyer who knew that Intel saw no future for Itanium, and was only continuing to invest in the line pursuant to a contractual obligation, would devalue the future prospects of Itanium servers and be less inclined to buy."

In a statement to Hesseldahl, HP fires back. "This filing is just the latest in [Oracle's] ongoing campaign to shore up its failing Sun server business and starve thousands of existing Itanium customers who rely on their Itanium processors for mission-critical activities.

"As Oracle well knows, HP and Intel have a contractual commitment to continue to sell mission-critical Itanium processers to our customers through the next two generations of microprocessors, thus ensuring the availability of Itanium through at least the end of the decade. HP is resolved to enforcing Oracle's commitments to HP and our shared customers and will continue to take actions to protect its customers' best interests."

HP filed its lawsuit in June of this year. And in August, then-CEO Leo Apotheker acknowledged that the Itanium flap was hurting business, saying, "Revenue in business-critical systems declined 9 percent year over year. This decline is sharper than expected as our ability to close deals has been impacted by Oracle's decision and orders are being delayed or canceled. We are working diligently to enforce the commitments that Oracle has made to our customers and to HP."

The Itanium chip was introduced in 1996 and has long been the butt of industry jokes owing to its failure to live up to its developers' hopes--instead of becoming the server market's "unifying architecture," spanning many server lines and operating systems, it's been relegated to a high-end niche.

Intel had no comment for Hesseldahl, but the company has said before that it stands behind Itanium. When Oracle announced, in March, that it was dropping support for the chip, Intel CEO Paul Ottelini said, "We remain firmly committed to delivering a competitive, multi-generational roadmap for HP-UX and other operating system customers that run the Itanium architecture."

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