Demand stays strong for hard disk drives

Shipments increase despite competition from flash memory

By Jim Carbone -- Purchasing, 7/23/2008 10:47:00 AM

Purchasing of hard disk drives (HDD) is strong worldwide, rising 21% in the first quarter alone to 137 million units. Looking at the whole year, researcher iSuppli Corp. forecasts unit shipments up 11% to 572 million. The bulk of the drives are being shipped to makers of mobile computers, desktop personal computers, consumer electronics, external drives and enterprise applications.

Major suppliers Seagate Technology Western Digital and Hitachi also expect to continue to increase shipments even though the HDD industry faces a challenge from highly price-competitive NAND flash memory in consumer electronics equipment. NAND-type flash has continued to make inroads in the computer segment as well.

Also see: Hard disk drives aren’t dead yet