SEAGATE said prices of hard disk drives for computers are out of their hands and market-driven as floods in Thailand watered-down the storage-maker’s capability to meet demands.

“We have two plants in Thailand, the drive assembly and the head assembly plant but neither one of which were affected. Our manufacturing ability is not affected. Still, the overall impact is on the supply chain,” senior vice president Ban Seng Teh said.

Ban Seng spoke to the BusinessMirror before a press conference on Thursday to launch the company’s portable drive called Seagate GoFlex Satellite. More than a dozen reporters and bloggers posted the same concern as the company said in a statement October 12 that “it is unclear what the magnitude of the supply chain disruption will be to Seagate’s hard disk drive output from its Thailand operations.”

Nearly two decades ago, Seagate originally wanted to put up a manufacturing facility in Cebu, but Ban Seng said this did not materialize as manufacturing costs at that time were high.

Nonetheless, he noted, “there are no indications” that the company plans to review that option.

Ban Seng, who is also Managing Director for Seagate Singapore International Headquarters Pte Ltd., said the Philippines is still “a PC market,” which reflects the worldwide trend.

He noted that Seagate estimates about 450 million PCs will be sold this year “and tablets will just be a fraction of that.”

“The sale of tablet devices will still lag behind PCs. As we noted, the PC penetration rate in the Philippines remains high relative to developed markets. The sales remain robust here.”

However with the flooding in Thailand, Ban Seng said the company could “likely not meet demand this quarter and possibly the next quarter as well.”

This would likely impact on the sales of PC as most of the units contain Seagate’s hard-disk drives, albeit Ban Seng he cannot comment on that.

“What I can say is we’re focusing on recovering the supply chain and make sure our manufacturing capability before the flood resumes.”

Founded in 1979, the Cupertino, California-headquartered Seagate came out in 1980 with the first 5-megabyte hard-disk drive at $5,000 each.

The company launched in the Philippines its 500-gigabyte storage product that can store up to 300 high-definition video and can be carried in a pocket. Suggested retail price is set around P9,888 each.