As the netbook market is expected to further expand in the upcoming year, PC vendors are said to be looking to come up with ways to improve the prices on some of the components, including hard disk drives, which are currently used in most of the netbooks available on the market. 

As part of said plan, Seagate Technology, Western Digital and Hitachi Global Storage Technologies are expected to come out with a solution that will come to meet the requirements of PC vendors. The three companies are to deliver 2.5-inch hard disk drives with a targeted price tag 40 to 50% lower than that of current solutions.

Digitimes cites “industry sources in Taiwan” claiming that the afore-mentioned storage companies are expected to provide a series of new 2.5-inch HDDS that will be priced 40 to 50% lower than current 2.5-inch HDDs featured in netbooks and low-cost PCs. The upcoming HDDs are to allow netbook makers to lower their manufacturing costs, which could also be reflected in the price of the end-product.

HDDs apparently represent the most expensive component in a netbook system, as CPUs, LCD panels, optical disc drives and batteries mostly fall between US$20 and US$25 each, while a 2.5-inch HDD can go for as much as US$43-45, a perfectly good reason for trying to lower the cost of these specific components. The three storage companies are said to be focusing on minimizing the cost of the drive's ICs, magnetic platters, and pick-up heads. Storage capacities for the lower priced hard drives are to fall between 80GB to 120GB, on the condition that the price cut is effective.

As expected, the lower-priced hard drives will come with both advantages and disadvantages. While HDD-equipped netbooks are expected to become even more popular, SSDs are likely to suffer from the move.