Now that the problem is understood it is clear that fewer PCs will ship in the first quarter because of a shortage of hard disk drives, driving an oversupply of semiconductors which will put prices into a tailspin.
This model is driving the growth of digital storage in data centers and thus the sale of hard disk drives, tape storage and flash memory used in enterprise storage tiers for these data centers.
That battle has made it easier for the PC makers to join in, which in turn is driving down the prices these firms are prepared to pay for other PC components such as memory chips, modems and disk drives.