After more than two years of riding high on growing demand for cloud data storage, Thailand's hard disk drive exporters are bracing for a fall from grace.
Figures Monday were expected to show Thai exports of hard disk drives in March extended a run of double-digit growth after jumping 45 percent in the first two months of 2016 to $1.1 billion. The rise has been a rare bright spot in Thai tech manufacturing, beset by cheaper competition from China.
But as the global boom in mobile devices cranks up, electronics makers are diverting demand away from old-school disk drives for servers and personal computers, seeking flash memory chip supplies instead. As well as fearing lower prices for their aging tech, Thai shippers now worry more advanced suppliers in countries like Malaysia will snap up business.