Disk-drive market is consolidating

Article written by A Tech Inc

Disk-drive or sometimes called hard disk drives (HDD) market is now evenly shared by two behemoths, Seagate Technology and Western Digital. Recent market consolidations pushed them not only to the top but also to share the leadership. Within the last year and half, Western Digital acquired two startups, Virident and Skyera. They both were important flash-memory technology companies. Seagate Technology on the other hand bought flash technology chip maker LSI. Flash-memory technology considered to be the replacement for disk drives in the future and provide faster response compared to disk drives. During the first quarter of 2014, Western Digital sold 60.4 million hard disk drives compared to 55.2 million units for Seagate Technology for the same period. The average price per unit for Western Digital was $58 compared to $61 for Seagate Technology.

Disk-drives or HDDs are still used in PCs, notebooks, printers, copiers, consumer products including MP3 players, game consoles, and even in home servers. Enterprise storage is also a key factor that generates more demand for disk-drives. Capacities of these peripherals range from 1GB to about 500GB. Demand for disk-drives come from computing and other devices that look for storage capacity at lower cost and demand higher performance.