Seagate Technology, one of the world’s largest manufacturers of hard disk drives, plans to cease production of mobile hard drives with 7200rpm spindle speed late this year as the mainstream market demand will shift to different products, such as solid-state hybrid drives (SSHDs). The company will continue to offer 5400rpm HDDs for value notebooks.

“We are going stop building our notebook 7200rpm hard disk drives at the end of 2013,” said David Burks, director of marketing and product management at Seagate Technology, during a conversation with X-bit labs.

Mobile hard disk drives with 7200rpm spindle speed offer a bit higher performance compared to hard drives with 5400rpm, but are still dramatically slower than various solid-state hybrid drives or solid-state drives (SSDs). As a result, those, who need maximum performance and cares about battery life, have been choosing notebooks with SSDs for years now, whereas those who required capacity, performance and moderate price do not really care about actual performance.

With the introduction of third-generation solid-state hybrid drives later this year, Seagate will position them for performance and capacity demanding end-users. To further stimulate customers to utilize SSHDs, the company will cease building hard drives with 7200rpm spindle-speed in 2.5” form-factor.

Even though Seagate will stop manufacturing 7200rpm mobile HDDs late this year, they will unlikely leave the market any time soon as there will be a lot of units stocked to fulfill demand from various customers.

Tags: Seagate, HDD, SSHD, Savvio, Momentus