X-bit labs

WD Goes Mobile HDDs.

Category: Storage

by Anton Shilov

[ 06/20/2003 | 10:19 AM ]

HDD business has been recovering for the past months, however, large companies dealing with storage equipment for personal computers clearly understood the drawbacks of the desktop PC industry and realized the growth potential of mobile HDD market. As a result, we see Seagate entering the market earlier this week (see this news-story) and Western Digital eyeing the same market.

According to a CNET report, the Lake Forest, California-based HDD company plans to enter the market of hard disk drives for mobile personal computers in future. They said WD has already begun appropriate R&D work in order to deliver its own mobile HDDs quickly. Obviously, there is no information about any products WD may want to offer. The only thing we can assume now is that WD will offer only Serial ATA-150 drives since its actual entry into the market may coincide with rapidly rising popularity of mobile HDD featuring the new interface.

Entering a new market is a tough task for every company and WD is not an exception. The company’s representatives fully admits all the challenges the company may face, nevertheless, they still see a lot of new business opportunities in the field. Currently there are three main players in this market: Hitachi Global Storage Technology, Toshiba and Fujitsu. Seagate Technology only stated to offer its HDDs this week, as a result, there may be a fierce competition between WD and Seagate for significant penetration of the new market.

WD and Seagate may eventually enjoy higher margins and revenues in case their new products for mobile market are adopted well. End-users will certainly enjoy lower prices on mobile HDDs as the competition will rise. In the end, hard disk drives for notebooks may decrease to the levels only a bit higher compared to ordinary desktop HDDs.