Thai floods to impact yearend electronic gadget sales

Sales of cameras, DVD players and other electronics products are likely to drop significantly during the yearend shopping season as the massive flooding in Thailand crimps hard-disk output and puts upward pressure on prices, research firm BCN said.

"The impact of the Thai floods (on digital appliance sales in Japan) could be bigger" than that of the devastating earthquake and tsunami in March, BCN analyst Ichiro Michikoshi said Thursday.

Sales of hard-disk drives are likely to plummet by 40 to 55 percent from late November to December from a year earlier, the firm said, because Thailand accounts for 60 percent of global output.

Sales of products that use hard disks, such as computers and DVD recorders, are expected to decline as a result. PC sales are predicted to drop around 10 percent, but DVD recorder sales are forecast to plunge by 50 to 60 percent because inventories are lower, BCN said.

Sales of digital cameras with interchangeable lenses are expected to fall 20 to 30 percent because the manufacturing plants of Sony Corp. and Nikon Corp. were damaged by the floods, it said.

Flat-panel TV sales are likely to plummet 60 to 70 percent, primarily due to a sharp drop in demand from the previous year, when sales of TVs jumped on replacement demand ahead of the termination of analog broadcasting in July, BCN said.