According to Digitimes the Chinese government has pulled the brake on the export of rare metals, which could lead to increase in harddrive prices by 5-10 %. This is a trend that will continue since China is trying to become more self reliant, and less depending on exports.
It is not the first first time we read these kind of news, and it comes as not surprise that it wants to export less and keep more of its resources. Back in 2010 the Chinese government reduced the export of rare metals with 40% to 30,000 ton. Exactly how much it has reduced the export now we don’t know, but it will be noticeable in many ways, harddrive prices for one.
These rare metals are just a small part of the harddrives and there prices shouldn’t be affected to any major degree, but since the metal are already hard to get some prices have gone up with 2,000 – 3,000%. Also the market for optical discs is affected by this, which has forced actors to remove themself from the market due to nonexistent margins.
The harddrive industry also has three major players today; Western Digital, Seagate and Toshiba, which leaves very little space for anyone to compete. Export limitations will not affect harddrive manufacturers since the manufacturing cost is in line with the price increase, which should not affect us consumers to any major extent.
It already estimates prices to gup in Q3, where 500 GB harddrives should go up with 10%, while 1 TB will get a minor increase of 5%. It warns that this will not be the last price increase since China shows no signs of increasing the export again, but will only reduce it.
Source: Digitimes
