HDD Price Above Levels Before Floods in Thailand in October 2011 – PriceG2

The charts below show the lowest HDD price found by capacity in gigabytes at major U.S. retailers for internal desktop 3.5" and portable 2.5" HDDs.

           Portable 2.5" Lowest Price (GB) Stacked

          
Portable 3.5" Lowest Price (GB) Stacked

While pricing has drifted down over Q2-2012 to Q2-2013, prices ending Q2-2013 for most models are still at or above the levels before the floods in Thailand in October of 2011, according Andy Higginbotham, president of market research and consulting firm PriceG2.

Industry consolidation has also been a major factor in slowing price erosion.
 
Mainstream HDD Prices Then and Now
The data table below shows the price of internal drives in 2011 the week before the floods in Thailand as compared to the prices for these same models few weeks ago.

   
% Change From Pre-Flood to Most Recent Week 2013

The internal desktop 3.5" 500GB and 1TB drives are still 12% and 14% over the early October 2011 prices. The internal portable 2.5" 250GB and 500GB drives have drifted down close to parity with levels today. The internal 2.5" 1TB drive has lost the most in percentage price decrease 27%; however, this model started in 2011 at an already high introduction price for new technology.

No SSD and HDD Prices Intercept This Year   
The logarithmic scale chart below shows the lowest prices found for 256, 512GB SSD and internal portable 2.5" 250, 500GB HDDs in the U.S. retail channel starting from July, 2010.

The SSD drives in the chart have been dropping in price at a near linear rate until December of 2012, where trajectories started to flatten out. Throughout 2013, SSD retail pricing has remained overall flat.

128GB SSD Prices for Current Quarter
The chart below shows the lowest prices found by six suppliers as compared to the lowest price found in the industry.

In this current quarter, Kingston drives were found to match the lowest industry price most consistently with a drive at Fry’s. This discount disappeared in week 24, 2013.