Western Digital on Thursday denied reports that it ceased shipments of hard disk drives to Taiwanese customers. The company continues to serve all its clients worldwide in the situation when most of its production capacities are halted.

Early on Thursday a Taiwan-based web-site reported that Western Digital had "notified its distributors in Taiwan that the company [would not] distribute any hard drives [...] to Taiwan in November". Apparently, the reports are "greatly exaggerated" and the company continues to provide hard drives to its customers around the world, probably in limited quantities.

"The statements made [by the web-site] are false. We understand our customers' concerns. WD and our suppliers are significantly supply constrained. Our intent is to be as balanced as possible in our approach to satisfying all of our customer's requirements, in all regions, countries and market segments," said Heather Skinner, a spokeswoman for WD.

Due to severe flooding in Thailand, Western Digital had to halt all of its hard drive manufacturing facilities, which responded for 60% of its output. Nonetheless, the company continues to make hard drives at other factories and has stockpiled drives available for shipments.

Independent industry analysts believe that the industry will hard enough hard disk drives for Q4 2011 and actual shortages may occur in the first quarter of next year. Nonetheless, this does not exclude local situations of tight supply.

Tags: WD, Western Digital, HDD, Business