Laptops 'rushed' to increase prices by the end of the year

Due to the fluctuation of the USD exchange rate and the shortage of hard drives caused by the flood situation in Thailand, many laptop products have increased in price at the time of shopping later this year.

Ms. Nguyen Thi Ngoc Thuong, Director of Laptop Business Development, The Gioi Di Dong JSC, said products at the company were affected about 10% for this reason. For example, Asus K43E Core i3 2330 2G 500 increased by 500,000 VND, while Dell 14r Core i3 / i5 increased by 600,000 VND compared to the previous listing price.

" But because the goods were imported at least one month before being launched, the price of most laptops at Mobile World from this time to Tet is still being tried to keep at the old price, " Ms Thuong said.

Prices of some laptops increased due to the impact of hard drive shortage in Thailand.

In Telecom A system, some Asus and Acer laptops are having to adjust their prices to match market fluctuations. A representative of another distributor also said laptop prices increased by about 10% due to hard drive factories in Thailand stalled.

Depending on the hard drive capacity, the price of each laptop model increased by 200,000 to more than 500,000. This representative said that the price increase is also a difficult problem for the business plan at the end of the year which is considered a " sale " season to attract tourists.

Representative of Asus computer company in Vietnam commented that current price of HDD drives increased by 30 to 40% compared to the previous due to the prolonged flood in Thailand which created a hard drive shortage. Prices of upcoming new laptop shipments will be affected by the increase in HDD prices.

" However, the price increase is only applied to the new batches of goods that have been transferred to Vietnam due to the Thai floods. The remaining products of the previous batches are still kept the old price ", Asus representative shared. .

Domestic computer dealers also assessed that despite the lack of hard drives, the price of laptops increased but at the end of the year the supply was still enough to cater to the needs of domestic consumers due to signing long-term contracts. with previous suppliers. If the shortage occurs, it will take place around February next year.

According to IDC research, only in the first 6 months of 2011, Thailand provided about 45% of the worldwide hard drive. But by early November, production was halved due to flooding. At present, it is not possible to give an accurate figure on the situation of damage to hard drive factories until the flood water recedes. However, it is certain that the supply of HDD hard drives will be in shortfall in the first quarter of 2012.

IDC forecasts that the shortage of HDD by the end of this year will continue in the first quarter of next year. The situation of PC production in the fourth quarter of 2011 will not be much affected by the amount of HDD inventory available. But in the worst case, the consequence of the shortage of HDD will make the total number of PCs in Q1 / 2012 may be reduced by more than 20% compared to the previous forecast.

The situation of oversupply also made the price of HDD increase, affecting production costs and cost of PC products. The hard drive industry will start to recover in the first quarter of 2012, HDD prices will gradually stabilize in June. Expected PC production will return to normal in the last 6 months of 2012.