14 DAY TRIAL // It seems that analyst estimates are turning out to have been wrong one after another. Acer was recently shown to have failed in its quest to supplant Dell as the second greatest PC supplier worldwide. Now, it seems that yet another top player has fallen short of its goal. According to iSupply, Western Digital didn't manage to outsell Seagate in the last quarter of 2009, which means that, when it comes to shipments and revenues, the latter is still the top-ranking hard drive supplier worldwide.
iSupply reports that Western Digital (WD) managed to score record shipments of 49.5 million hard disk drives, which represents an amount 12 percent greater compared to its third-quarter numbers. Revenues also increased by 19 percent, to $2.57 billion, up from $2.16 billion in the third quarter. This corresponds to about a 30-percent share of the total HDD market.
Nevertheless, even despite this performance, WD wasn't able to surpass Seagate, which shipped a total of 49.9 million HDDs, eight percent more than it did in the third quarter of 2009. This is the equivalent of a 31-percent share. In parallel, revenues rose to $3.03 billion in the fourth quarter, up from $2.66 billion in the third. This is the equivalent of a 34-percent share of the market.
“The tenacious hold at the top for Seagate surprised many observers who thought Western Digital would bypass its primary competitor in the fourth quarter of last year,” Fang Zhang, analyst for storage systems at iSuppli, said. “Despite shipping a record 49.5 million HDD units—a 12 percent expansion from the earlier quarter—Western Digital was unable to dislodge Seagate and had to settle once again for second place, finishing close behind with approximately 30 percent market share.”
iSupply predicts that the ranking will persist in the first quarter of 2010.