Japanese electronics conglomerate Hitachi Ltd said on Friday its supply of 1.0-inch disk drives was running behind demand and that it would ramp up output at its Thailand plant as soon as possible.
The comments came after Apple Computer Inc said on Thursday it would delay global sales of its new iPod mini digital music player until July due to tight supplies of hard disk drives (HDDs).
Neither firm has confirmed Hitachi makes the iPod drives, but as the sole commercial maker of 1.0-inch drives with 4-gigabyte storage capacity, which Apple uses in its iPod mini, Hitachi is widely believed to be supplying HDDs to the US computer maker.
"We are planning to boost production at our plant in Thailand, and it will come sooner rather than later," a Hitachi spokesman said.
He declined to specify details such as the scale and timing of the planned output expansion.
Jun Naruse, chief executive of Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (HGST), said on Wednesday it planned to step up 1.0-inch disk drive production to keep pace with customer demand, without elaborating.
HGST, the world's second-largest disk drive maker behind Seagate Technology HDD Holdings by revenue, is the only major supplier capable of offering a full-range of products from standard 3.5-inch drives to the 1.0-inch variety.
Hitachi bought International Business Machines' loss-making disk drive operations in late 2002 for $2.05 billion to create HGST, and targeted disk drives as one of its core businesses.
Naruse told Reuters on Wednesday he was confident the unit would post an annual profit in 2004 after an operating loss of $87 million last year, helping boost its shares to a 21-month high on Thursday.
Shares in Hitachi closed up 4.3 percent at 829 yen on Friday, in line with the Tokyo Stock market's electric machinery index, which rose 3.8 percent.
High-tech issues gained ground after a rally on Wall Street encouraged investors to chase Japanese technology shares.
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