“The six-week waiting list to get a popular iPod Mini digital music player from Apple Computer Inc. is likely to get shorter by the end of the year.
Hitachi Ltd’s (Tokyo:6501.T – News) hard disk drive unit said on Sunday that it will spend about $200 million to double the disk drive output of its Thailand factory, including the 1-inch, 4-gigabyte disk drives that are found in the iPod Mini. […]
In March, Cupertino, California-based Apple (NasdaqNM:AAPL – News) said it would delay global sales of the iPod Mini because it couldn’t get enough of the hard drives to meet U.S.
demand, which had then surpassed supply through June. Apple now plans to sell iPod outside the United States starting in July.”
Editor’s note: You can also read more about the Hitachi microdrive shortage in a report from The Mac Observer with specific comments from Hitachi and Apple executives.