Thai Floods Hit Disk, Car, Camera Production, Says iSuppli

The folks at research firm IHS iSuppli this afternoon warn that recent floods in Thailand that have wreaked havoc with some tech manufacturing, including especially the operations of disk-drive maker Western Digital (WDC), are having a very broad impact on electronic components.

The most direct impact will be felt by the drive business, which will see total drive shipments fall 28%, to 125 million units from 173 million in Q3, iSuppli advises. That’s the biggest drop since Q4 of 2008, which was 21%. That could cause hard drive prices to rise 10%. The PC industry has sufficient stockpiles of drives for the moment, but effects lasting as long as six months could start to impact Q1 2012 notebook computer production, the firm warns.

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Beyond drives, “eight original equipment manufacturers (OEM) that build cars in central Thailand have halted all output,” the firm notes, those being Ford, Mazda, Hino, Honda, Isuzu, Mitsubishi, Nissan and Toyota. And the “loss of critical automotive electronic component and parts supply from Thailand” is affecting Japan’s car market as well, and could hurt North America’s auto plants.

Manufacturing of camera parts by Sony, Nikon and Canon have been hit and camera shipments will probably drop this quarter and next, iSuppli thinks.

Analog chip makers ON Semiconductor (ONNN) and Microsemi (MSCC) have both been affected, though the disruption there should have “minimal impact” on the rest of the chip industry.