Flash drives keep gaining in popularity, but hard disk drive sales are growing rapidly at a rate of 30 percent per year, according to Western Digital (WD), which claims to be the world's largest manufacturer of external HDDs.
According to WD's sales and marketing director Craig Davis there were many factors driving the growth of external HDDs, including an expected one billion Windows PCs, six million Macs and 111 million digital cameras by the end of 2008, in addition to the 217 million MP3 players, one billion camera phones together with 21 million DVRs estimated to be out there at the end of last year.
''These all require more data storage and they are the opportunities for the sale of external HDDs,'' he said.
Citing Parks Associates, Davis said that 17 percent of movie and TV shows, 26 percent of personal videos, 36 percent of video clips, 59 percent of music and 84 percent of digital pictures were stored digitally. Davis added that tomorrow's digital homes would have external HDDs containing shared files. Consumers would also have HDDs in bedrooms and living rooms for movies, photos, music and gaming.
By the year 2010, personal storage needs were expected to reach 5TB.
According to WD's Southeast Asia director of sales Margaret Koh, revenues for Q3 of 2008 were predicted to be US$2 billion, up by 43 percent from last year. The company shipped 34.5 million units, up 41 percent over last year. Of the total, 10.2 million were 2.5in. drives aimed at the mobile market.
Koh noted that 54 percent of revenues were from new markets, which included consumer electronics, external drives and non-PC markets.
She said that while the overall HDD market was split 50-50 between traditional and new markets, WD's sales into new markets had already outpaced sales into traditional markets.
''We are the number one manufacturer of external HDDs in the world, and have the largest number of employees in Thailand, more than 20,000 people,'' she said.
The OEM business was important to WD, accounting for 50 percent of sales, followed by the distribution channel, at 34 percent and retail at 16 percent. ''OEM is still our main focus, however the retail segment tends to increase and it will comprise a big percentage of WD's revenues,'' Koh said, noting that the worldwide HDD growth was around 30 percent. The company recently rolled out 11 new colors for its My Passport Essential and My Passport Elite portable USB drives. Targeted at consumers, My Passport Essential drives are offered in capacities of 160GB, 250GB and 320GB, while My Passport Elite are offered in 250GB and 320GB to serve business and heavy data users. The portable USB drives feature automatic backup software, synchronisation software, MioNet Key software to retrieve forgotten files, a capacity gauge and five year warranties for the Elite range, and three years for the Essential products.
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good for backing up important files
I use a 250GB WD harddrive along with Titan Backup to regularly backup my files and emails. You can test the full unrestricted copy for 15 days: (web link)
Posted by Charly Mendoza on Wednesday, May 07 2008 03:26 PM