14 DAY TRIAL // It appears that Seagate has successfully secured the second spot in the worldwide HDD production rankings.
The company finished the proceedings for the acquisition of Samsung's HDD division on December 19.
Thus, its financial results for the second quarter of fiscal year 2012 (ended on December 30, 2011) included the Samsung operating activity from that day onwards.
It looks like, overall, Seagate did better than initially assumed during the December quarter.
It expects to report revenue of $3.1-$3.2 billion instead of the $2.79 billion that analysts had projected.
The sum is the result of 47 million HDD shipments, of which 700,000 were Samsung models.
"The better than expected results for the December quarter are attributed to the company's outstanding operational performance and overall strong execution. Due to our best-in-class operations, diversified supply-chain and differentiated manufacturing footprint, we continuously optimized our builds for customers during the quarter,” said Steve Luczo, Seagate CEO and chairman.
“This is best evidenced by our company's ability to increase the average capacity per drive shipped quarter-over-quarter to a record 653 gigabytes, despite the significant supply chain disruption. These results also reflect the hard work and resiliency of the Seagate teams and our strategic suppliers who are working to help the industry recover from the massive disruption caused by the flooding in Thailand."
Seagate thinks HDD prices will remain stable in 2012, which is not as encouraging for consumers as it sounds.
After the Thai floods that shot down factories, prices went up quite a bit, which means that the phrase “stable HDD prices” is the same as saying HDDs will continue to be expensive for months.
Seagate may not have been directly affected by the overflowing waters, but HDD component suppliers weren't as lucky.
Hopefully the shortage of platter spinners will be resolved with a higher efficiency than these projections suggest.