Western Digital has reported their quarterly earnings today, and there are finally some hard numbers to show off the effect of the floods in Thailand.
Year-over-year, the company saw a huge drop in drives shipped, down to 28.5 million down from 52.2 million. The company took a $200 million loss in expenses related to the floods, and a $500 million drop in total revenue.
On the other ... [ read the full article ]
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Without knowing how factories are constructed over there, what kind of equipment is used and where the factories are you can't assume much other than you can't assume anything.
I remember when a work-make was complaining how lazy the workers in Demoins Iowa were because they hadn't answered the phone in a week. The boss asked don't you watch the news? The 55 ft leavy broke when flood waters smashed it and the city was under 70 ft of water. This was in the heart of the US. Stilts would not have helped even if they were 50 ft high. The water would have eroded them.
kfir1 you don't have a clue! Mother Nature can be a Bitch!
Then to simply comment on everyone's statements as a whole & play Devil's Advocate; then there really is no reason for the manufacturers to have built redundant factories in other areas so as to pick up a bit of the slack.
By the simple facts of each sides debate here Ma Nature is gong to do as she pleases (no doubt) & as I have said in the past, corporations just simply refuse to have redundancies in place for just such an emergency.
These idiots really do think they'll get out of town with their share & leave the next asshole holding the bag.
They all know better. It's belligerent greed warped ethics & non existent morals on any plain of existence that allows for this & similar business models to push the economy into the state that it's in. Then like turd bending toddlers, when one sees another getting away with bad behavior the rest think they all have to try & get away with it too.
Maybe Ma-Nature is trying to tell us something else here?
LordRuss, maybe the factories were not primarily built to survive a typhoon. Just like it might be prudent to have your abode burglar proof. Reality is most aren't. Do you have a burglar alarm or bars on your windows? Probably not, that is normal.
If you are starting up a manufacturing unit of what ever, you ALWAYS put it in the same place as another one. Why? You hire persons that have done the job before. I live near a Netflick hub. When Blockbuster went in to competition they put their hub in the same city. The government has moved many operations out of DC so they can save money on personnel. I know many operations can't keep programmers. Programmers take the job because they are out of work but jump ship when they can move back to DC.
There is lots of low level technology that you will either have to learn the hard way if you can't hire persons with experience.
Originally posted by Mez: LordRuss, maybe the factories were not primarily built to survive a typhoon. Just like it might be prudent to have your abode burglar proof. Reality is most aren't. Do you have a burglar alarm or bars on your windows? Probably not, that is normal.
That's not 'exactly' where I was coming from, but I see your point.
I suppose another avenue I should come from would be to say is, they KNOW they are in an an area that gets typhoons. So, even though being 100% waterproof isn't always going to be possible, being a fortune top 10 company on the planet can most certainly afford you a redundant manufacturing plant elsewhere on the globe "just in case". That's basically where I was coming from.
Human nature is not to do much in the way of corrections. They are insured.
Yes, I agree it would be prudent to have at least one other location, which all they do. I think everyone has missed what I think was going on. HD prices have been slipping this gives them an excuse to up the prices but not enough customers are 'buying it'. They were doing a gas price increase with HDs. The price at the pump does up the day after the disaster. That wouldn't work either if we could all hold off buying gas for 6 months.
I suspect the prices will come down now that they were bloodied by the gambol.
