Due to a shortage of controller chips for motors used in hard disk drives, prices of HDDs in the OEM market are likely to increase by 5-10% in the second quarter. Prices in the channel rose 10-15% recently.

The shortage was caused by an interruption of production at the three wafer plants of Texas Instruments (TI) in Japan, which were damaged by the recent earthquake. TI will not be able to resume shipments from Japan until September, the sources noted.

TI and STMicroelectronics are the major suppliers for HDD motors to a number of HDD makers including Western Digital and Seagate.

Global shipments of HDDs are expected to top 100 million units in the second quarter compared to 160 million units shipped in the previous quarter, the sources estimated.