Intel cuts Q4 sales outlook by $1 billion due to HDD shortage

Intel today annaounced that its fourth-quarter revenue will be lower than previously expected due to the ongoing hard disk drive supply shortages. The company said it now expects fourth-quarter revenue to be $13.7 billion, plus or minus $300 million, compared to  the previous expectation of $14.2 billion to $15.2 billion. Intel also lowered its gross margin outlook by half a point to 64.5%, plus or minus a couple of percentage points.

The company noted that sales of personal computers are expected to be up sequentially during the fourth quarter. However, the worldwide PC supply chain is reducing inventories and microprocessor purchases as a result of the supply shortages caused from the recent floodings in Thailand. Intel doesn't expect an impact in the current period, but it's bracing for the continued effect the restricted HDD production will have going into 2012.

"We do expect continued shortage of [hard-disk drives] to be pretty significant in the early part of 2012," Intel Chief Financial Officer Stacy Smith said. "And we expect supply to catch up to overall demand sometime in the first half of 2012. Where exactly that happens over the course of the first half is too early to say, but we do expect that this will catch up sometime in the first half."

The news sent Intel shares down 5% to $23.76 in recent trading. But Intel is not the only company feeling the effect of a slowdown in computer production. According to The Wall Street Journal, rival AMD also traded lower, off 4.9% to $5.27, while computer graphics chip maker Nvidia slid 4.1% to $14.29.

Steam forums shut down due to security breach?

Steam’s official forums are currently offline for what is being called a maintenance issue, although there’s reason to believe that the site’s vBulletin forum software may have been hacked. Value hasn’t commented on the issue yet but some gamers noticed a suspicious message on the forum last night that suggests a security breach.

Eurogamer was contacted by a Steam user who said a group known as fkn0wned changed the text on the forum and spammed some user’s email addresses. The text reads as follows.

Ever wanted to dominate the servers you play on with guaranteed results, but you were too afraid to cheat because of ban risks? Visit Fkn0wned.com. It’s safe, secure and undetected. Along with hacks, we’ve also got some general discussion sections, hacking tutorials and tools, porn, free giveaways and much more. This site has been conditioned to meet all of your needs in terms of resources so be sure to take a look and tell us what you think. Thanks again, the fkn0wned team.

At this point it’s unclear whether any private data like passwords or billing information has been compromised. The breach likely took place sometime last night and as of writing, the Steam’s forum is still “down for maintenance.”

If we had to take a guess, we’d point the blame at Valve’s use of forum software vBulletin which has seen its share of security breaches in the past. Just to be on the safe side, we would advise anyone reading this to change your Steam forum password and perhaps do the same at any other sites where you use the same login credentials.