Seagate Technology, a leading manufacturer of hard disk drives, said Tuesday it is the first hard disk drive manufacturer to ship two billion HDDs, a staggering number fueled by the explosive demand for storage from mobile applications, cloud infrastructures, social media, business applications and a wide variety of consumer markets.

“This is truly an impressive accomplishment and I am proud to lead this company as we celebrate this success. This achievement is a testament to the commitment of our employees whose relentless dedication and personal pride continue to be the fabric of this company,” said Steve Luczo, president, CEO and chairman of Seagate.

Seagate celebrated shipment of 1.5 billionth HDD in October, 2010, whereas the one billionth hard disk drive milestone was reached in April, 2008. A testament to the pivotal role played by storage in today’s digital world, it took Seagate 29 years to reach one billion units shipped and just four and half years to reach the second billion milestone.

One of the key manufacturing facilities that made possible to ship a billion of hard drives in four and a half years is Seagate’s China operations established back in 1995. In Q4 2012 the total amount of hard disk drives produced by Seagate in China exceeded one billion of units.

“The ever-growing number of mobile and content capture devices using cloud services is fueling the growth of digital content. Mobile devices and the cloud are coming together to drive ongoing demand for hard disk drives, with shipments reaching more than 585 million units in 2013, and hard disk drive terabyte shipments worldwide growing at a 30% 2012-2016 compound annual growth rate,” said John Rydning, IDC’s research vice president, for hard drives and semiconductors

By 2015 households which today routinely consume 1TB of data a month are expected to generate 20 times the amount of data than they currently save, according to Richard Doherty, research director of the Envisioneering Group, a technology research and consulting company.

“Consumer’s continued appetites for securely saving and organizing high-definition multimedia requires higher performance and the most trusted and dependable drives. Seagate’s drives and technology roadmap provide the ideal solution for consumer's soaring need for storage in the home - and away; now, and in the future,” said Mr. Doherty.

Tags: Seagate, Samsung, HDD, Business