back to article WD blames hard drive woes on dominant mobile gear, feeble PCs

Western Digital's disk sales slumped in its last quarter, leading to lower revenue and profit than in the previous three months. Its next quarter is going to be even worse. Revenues in WD's Q1 of fiscal 2013, ended 28 September, amounted to $4bn, 17 per cent less than the $4.8bn a quarter before. And Q1 was the first quarter …

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  1. Hayden Clark Silver badge
    Happy

    .. or maybe the customers won't play?

    I'm guessing that quite a few big consumers of drives are just waiting for prices to descend to pre-flood levels.

    1. Richard Jones 1

      Re: .. or maybe the customers won't play? ** Plus one to that

      I have just put a smaller than planned disk into a new build and held off upgrading a second for that very reason. Costs still have a way to fall to become 'normalised' once more.

      1. zaphy42
        FAIL

        Re: .. or maybe the customers won't play? ** Plus one to that

        Agreed. I'm holding off on a 2Tb drive until prices return to what they were. I flatly refuse to pay £80-100+ for something I could have bought for £50-ish several months ago.

        They're not getting my cash until prices settle back to what they were. Times are hard.

        1. SuperTim

          Re: .. or maybe the customers won't play? ** Plus one to that

          It took me over a week of constant scouring of various sites to get a new one for £60 and I was lucky... I wanted a bigger one but £/TB was higher so 2TB it is for now.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: .. or maybe the customers won't play?

      Up to a point I'm sure you're right.

      But if you've built a properly resilient infrastructure, then you've got options that go beyond WD and Seagate - so flash (wooo-ooooo) is credible and the performance may be sufficient to outweigh the costs, and cheap unheard of Chinese disks may also be an acceptable risk.

      The floods did limit demand, and a price rise was a normal market reaction to restricted supply. But perhaps the timing can now be seen as very bad for WD, and has accelerated the move to alternatives.

  2. Robert E A Harvey

    In other news

    Makers of gas mantles complain of falling sales.

    Very poor market for starting handles.

    Domestic coal deliveries at all-time low.

  3. Efros

    Having just been subjected to

    WD Smartware, if ever a POS software package was misnamed this is the one. If I was WD I'd be looking in house for some of their problems, or even better just have a look at their customer forums.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      FAIL

      Re: Having just been subjected to

      I don't give a fuck about prices of drives any more - I want total reliability.

      As in a minimum of 5 years error and defect free running per set of drives.

      I bought 2 WD Caviar Black 2TB drives - 3 months - one was showing bad sectors. Got that replaced.

      Within 10 months - both of them were showing bad sectors and one was having difficulty spinning up and reading and writing properly.

      Another cheapy 500G WD drive, with a mere 21 days total of running time was showing impending fatal type errors.....

      Western Digital (along with Seagate) can go fuck themselves.

      Read their reviews people, read their reviews.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Look how their profits went through the roof after the flood, the price-gouging twats.

    1. Anonymous Coward
    2. FutureShock999
      Megaphone

      No money from ME!

      I have a Synology 1812+ sitting here, that is in desperate need of 8 x 3Terabyte Red drives from WD. But not at these ridiculous prices!!! I will lumber on with my current Caviar Black drives until they begin to fail. The flood was over a LONG time ago...but prices haven't dropped. That's OK, then neither will your drives drop into my systems...

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Ha!

    Of course, this is nothing at all to do with reduced reliability and high prices. That would be crazy.

    I resent paying that much for unreliable drives, and MTBF are through the floor.

    Neither are just WD, so whomever gets those two details sorted first will sell a lot of stuff - as a bonus, their returns rate will drop and thus have a better margin (ship shit, ship twice).

    Then both supplier and customers win, which is how I like it.

  6. Dagg Silver badge
    Mushroom

    The answer is simple!

    Crap drives! I've had three caviar series die, the second one was still under warranty so it was replaced. The replacement died 3 months later and I'm still waiting for a replacement. So basically for me no more WD drives.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    absolutely and categorically

    definitely nothing to do with the post-flood price-hike scam.

    Price-hike?! what price hike?! say John, Steve and Wolfgang.

    Oh, the indignity! says Thomas.

  8. kuddlesworth55

    how can companies demand an increase in profit every year, it makes no sense. If a company today makes the same profit it did last year it lays of people, even though they still made a profit. Be happy with what you got. Many people arn't making any profit because of the economic slump so even making a couple billion in profit is realy good.

  9. Ant Evans
    Paris Hilton

    Demand yours

    I love my Scorpio Blacks, and price won't be a consideration when I have to get a new one pretty soon. Drive manufacurers need to differentiate the products that deserve a price premium, and actually market them. This morning I saw a giant Samsung SSD marketing truck parked prominently in the middle of Frankfurt. I've not noticed any above the line marketing from WD or Seagate. Their consumer stuff is good but unimaginative. I don't see any accompanying service offerings for example. Maybe I'm not paying attention.

    Man, are we spoilt, just like Paris.

    The business market is another kettle of worms: the drives are a trivial part of the cost of enterprise storage. Drive manufacturers are definitely the tail, not the dog.

    Wholesale & OEM? One can only guess at the level of carnage.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I find WD drives very unreliable. Am switching to ssds for desktop units.

    1. Ant Evans
      Coat

      gfwfg

      SSDs don't work underwater either

      1. cordwainer 1
        Happy

        Re: gfwfg

        But at least they float

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