Western Digital has become the largest maker of hard disk drives (HDDs) in the world, based on the company’s own financial report for its third quarter of fiscal 2010, which ended on the 2nd of April. Apparently, WD shipped 800 thousand of hard drives more than Seagate Technologies in the first quarter of calendar 2010.
In the Q1 2010 Western Digital shipped 51.1 million of hard disk drives, whereas Seagate Technologies supplied 50.3 million of HDDs. Although unconfirmed, but 51.1 million of hard drives per quarter seems to be the all time record in terms of HDD shipments for Western Digital.
The lead over Seagate is not significant at the moment for Western Digital and it remains to be seen whether Seagate will be able to sustain the leadership position throughout the rest of the year. Nevertheless, the example of competition between Seagate and WD shows rather interesting trends. Seagate attempted to boost its HDD shipments by acquiring Maxtor, a transaction that resulted in gradual decline of hard drive shipments by the new company compared to aggregated shipments of Seagate and Maxtor separately. Meanwhile, Western Digital has consistently improved its own operations and made only strategic acquisitions.
Western Digital reported revenue of $2.6 billion and net income of $400 million, or $1.71 per share, for its third fiscal quarter ended April 2, 2010. In the year-ago quarter, the company reported revenue of $1.6 billion, hard drive shipments of 31.6 million units, and net income of $50 million, or $0.22 per share.
The company generated $588 million in cash from operations during the third quarter, ending with total cash and cash equivalents of $2.8 billion.
"With market demand stronger than anticipated in the March quarter, our large-scale vertical integration, agile business model and product breadth allowed us to respond to this upside opportunity and again grow our share of the overall hard drive market. We believe that 2010 will continue to be a strong year for digital storage," said John Coyne, president and chief executive officer.
Tags: WD, Western Digital, HDD, Business
Comments currently:
10
Discussion started: 04/23/10 10:11:31 AM
Latest comment: 04/26/10 05:34:11 PM
[1-10]
1.
Of cause they did.
If you look at how quality of Seagate has declined, can you blame consumers for switching to WD.
I’m for one, switch to WD for my HD needs.
0
0
[
Posted by: dmk2000
|
Date: 04/23/10 10:11:31 AM]
2.
Yes WD quality is great but even better is their tech/RMA process in the unlikely event of HDD failure or if you buy a 'dud' WD HDD
0
0
[
Posted by: alpha0ne
|
Date: 04/24/10 10:56:50 PM]
3.
WD has long been better in value and quality over Seagate for over 5 years. They well deserve it.
0
0
[
Posted by: annihilatorx
|
Date: 04/25/10 05:09:12 AM]
4.
Never have problem with WD ,price/perfomance ratio for WD is good too.I except similar from WD with SSD disk.
0
0
[
Posted by: Blackcode
|
Date: 04/25/10 01:39:30 PM]
5.
I like WD, but their failure rates seem higher than they use to be in the past. From the looks of it Samsung and Hitachi have some of the lowest failure rate HD's these days.
0
0
[
Posted by: knowom
|
Date: 04/25/10 03:51:07 PM]
6.
Seagate did it to themselves with poor QC. I used to buy nothing but Seagate and now I won't touch any of their products. I have switched to Samsung and haven't had any issues with 5 of their drives (1TB to 1.5TB in size).
0
0
[
Posted by: JonMCC33
|
Date: 04/25/10 09:49:32 PM]
7.
I have 5 seagate 7200.11 @ 1.5TB drives, on several computers
3 of them are absolutely fine, but the other 2 have some "click-clack" bug that annoys me to death
I'll go to some other brand on my next update (hopefully, in no less than a couple of years)
0
0
[
Posted by: NormanBates
|
Date: 04/26/10 01:01:52 AM]
8.
I ll never buy segate's drive again becouse of 7200.11 series. I had four 500 GB drives and after 6 mounths - all dead.
Congrats!
0
0
[
Posted by: kudzawa
|
Date: 04/26/10 07:31:07 AM]
9.
Well, I moved over to SAMSUNG after SEAGATE started to suck. The only SEAGATEs I would touch is the enterprise grade drive which I do have for my data drive. SAMSUNG is officially my favourite HDD brand now.
Then again, I do have hard drives from all 4 consumer drive manufacturers in my desktop...
0
0
[
Posted by: deltatux
|
Date: 04/26/10 12:48:18 PM]
10.
WD is a king of HD for me.
had few Samsungs, in 2.5" laptop size, all dead after 12 month, however RMA is a breeze with them.
0
0
[
Posted by: dmk2000
|
Date: 04/26/10 05:34:11 PM]
[1-10]
Make Home Page
Add to Favorites
Xbitlabs on Facebook
XbitLabs is using Twitter
Windows Live Alerts
