Western Digital Corp.’s hard drive sales have fallen to the lowest level since heavy monsoons and record floods shut down its Thailand manufacturing hub nearly five years ago.
The Irvine-based company sold 40.1 million hard drive units in the June quarter, down from 43.1 million units in the April quarter and the lowest volume since the December 2011 quarter when it sold 28.5 million units.
The 2011 low point came after WD suspended hard drive production at its plant outside the Thai capital of Bangkok, following a heavier-than-usual monsoon season punctuated by floods. The company didn’t regain full operations for almost a year in Thailand, which accounted for about 60% of its disk drive production at the time.
The company’s disk drives, which use spinning disks to store data, go into computers, external storage devices, corporate networks and consumer electronics.
Sagging global PC sales are at the root of the latest drop, as PC shipments in the second quarter fell to 64.3 million units, down 5.2% from a year earlier, according to Gartner Inc. It was the seventh straight quarter of global PC shipment declines.
Gartner projects PC shipments to decline 1% this year from 2015, when global sales totaled 288.7 million units, marking the first time they fell below 300 million units since the depths of the recession.
The world’s largest disk drive maker has made strides to diversify its product lineup over the years, highlighted by its record $17 billion acquisition of Milpitas-based SanDisk Corp. that closed in May. The buy more than doubles its market opportunities to $76 billion while boosting higher-margin business lines in solid-state drives and the booming data analytics, digital video, cloud computing and data center storage segments.
Its non-PC hard disk drives, which include those geared for gaming and enterprise customers, accounted for nearly 52% of its total hard drive sales in the June quarter.
The product mix and ongoing integration of SanDisk and HGST helped the company post sales of $3.5 billion in the most recent quarter, up 9.5% from the same period a year ago. Its annual sales are $14.5 billion.
Mixed Movie Showing
The box office tallies are in for “Warcraft: The Beginning.”
The movie based on Blizzard Entertainment Inc.’s franchise fantasy game killed internationally but largely bombed stateside. It pulled in more than $433 million globally but mustered only $47.2 million in the U.S., or roughly 11% of sales, according to boxofficemojo.com.
China propped up the international figures, accounting for $220.8 million. It was the seventh highest grossing film in China’s history.
The strong showing in the Middle Kingdom led Beijing-based online video network PPTV to pay roughly $24 million for post-theatrical rights, a figure believed to be the highest for a movie in that market, the Wall Street Journal recently reported. Unlike the U.S., where movie rights are sold to cable providers for pay-per-view, cable networks, streaming providers such as Netflix, and legacy networks such as CBS, Chinese consumers will be able to view “Warcraft” only online and for a set price, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The film was financed by Legendary Pictures LLC, which acquired the movie rights for an undisclosed amount, and Warner Bros., both based in Burbank. Universal Pictures is the distributor.
Legendary in January was acquired for $3.5 billion by Dalian Wanda Group Co., China’s largest commercial real estate developer and movie theater chain operator.
China has always been a key market for the Irvine-based video game publisher and accounts for about half of Blizzard’s 5 million-plus subscribers, who pay about $15 per month to play “World of Warcraft” online with friends and foes across the globe.
