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Dave.Dykstra
I suspect we will see the PC/Tablet market largely move to Flash with HDDs being ...
Frank Eory
The only problem with the CRT analogy is that what replaced CRTs quickly came ...
Western Digital grabs disk drive lead
Peter Clarke
2/22/2011 10:59 AM EST
LONDON – The hard disk drive market recorded growth of 17.1 percent in unit shipments to reach 653.5 million units in 2010, according to The Information Network. Western Digital Corp. took from long-time market leader Seagate Technology plc.
This is mainly because whereas Seagate had focused on desktop, enterprise and server applications Western Digital had pursued the personal and mobile computer markets where strong growth served to boost its fortunes.
Seagate relocated from the Cayman Islands to Ireland with effect from July 3, 2010.
Western Digital, which has focused primarily the 2.5-inch form factor for mobile and CE, took over the lead in 2010 from Seagate, which has focused on the desktop and the enterprise markets. In 2010, mobile PCs grew 29 percent while desktop PCs grew only 8 percent, TIN said.
In the mobile HDD sector, Western Digital led the 2010 market with a 27.5 percent share followed by Hitachi Global Storage Technologies with a 26.0 percent share and Seagate with a 20.4 percent share.
However, tablet computers, which include solid-state storage, are cannibalizing the netbook market and will impact magnetic disk drive sales. More than 54 million media tablets will sell in 2011, according to The Information Network.
Company 2009 2010
Western Digital 29.6% 31.2%
Seagate Tech 31.4% 29.9%
Hitachi Global 16.4% 17.2%
Toshiba/Fujitsu 12.6% 10.9%
Samsung 9.2% 9.7%
Others 0.8% 1.2%
Total 558.3 M 653.5 M
Market share of hard disk
drive manufacturers: Source The Information Network
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selinz
2/22/2011 2:32 PM EST
Well, I have indeed noticed the preponderance of WD on the low end of the spectrum at our local electronics superstore. That does seem to be a good indicator. I got a 2TB drive for $79. The big question is can they make money at that margin?
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fdunn
2/22/2011 3:16 PM EST
Most all of the increases in Market Share have come at the expense of Seagate. Seagate still has a robust line of SAS, Fiber Channel, and other enterprise storage but it has lost (for now) the confidence of integrators of their consumer lines.
After the Seagate nnnn.10 line and continuing into the nnnn.12 line of consumer integrated drives the failure rate has been much higher than their previous drives and most importantly, their competitors.
The same thing happened to Western Digital in their 1.4GB - ~8GB drives, it was not IF the drives would fail during their warranty period but WHEN. Seagates Market Share benefitted from that debacle (especially to WDs Silence on the issue as well as the contractual silence of their huge market integrators) for years.
Sorry Seagate, I was an avid (maybe even rabid ;) follower in this space (Seagates NS vs WDs RE3 & RE4 RAID lines) but if I were to have to buy today You would have to convince me that I would not have to go through unnecessary rebuilds and have an ongoing RMA ping-pong relationship.
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Duane Benson
2/22/2011 5:04 PM EST
Does this even matter now? Yes, there are a lot of HDD made and sold still, but there's likely only a decade left. This strikes me as would a discussion of the top-two CRT manufacturers back in 1999 or 2000.
I'm not saying that HDDs will disappear. But they will be gradually forced into niche markets that require maximum capacity or some other attribute specific to rotating media. Okay, I am saying that they will disappear. They'll be forced into those specialty niches and then before anyone notices, they'll be gone altogether.
The important discussions are related to solid state media. Who is leading in the technology and price curves and who is likely to have the lead in the coming decade. For that debate, Seagate and Western Digital are far from the only players worth analyzing.
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Frank Eory
2/22/2011 6:53 PM EST
The only problem with the CRT analogy is that what replaced CRTs quickly came down to comparable, mass-market-friendly prices...otherwise the death of the CRT would've taken much longer.
selinz recently paid $79 for a 2TB hard drive. How much flash can you buy for that price? How many years will it take before the price difference per terabyte (by then it will be price per petabyte) between hard drives and solid state memory will be insignificant?
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Dave.Dykstra
2/24/2011 8:46 PM EST
I suspect we will see the PC/Tablet market largely move to Flash with HDDs being used for backups, media servers, and mass storage. As Frank so succinctly points out, price is a significant factor and will continue to be for some time, especially at terabyte and petabyte levels.
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