14 DAY TRIAL // All computer users have more than a year left to still enjoy the “wonderful” duopoly in the HDD industry. Toshiba was supposed to pose as the third HDD player in the market, but it doesn’t seem to be eager to.
After Seagate acquired Samsung’s successful HDD business last year, Western Digital announced its intention to acquire Hitachi’s good performing HDD division.
Authorities conditioned this move and asked WD to provide Toshiba with the necessary equipment and IP so that the Japanese company could pose as a third competitor on the HDD market.
Toshiba was already a player on the HDD market, but it only manufactured 2.5” HDDs and some enterprise HDDs made by Fujitsu’s old HDD division.
There was an absolute duopoly in the market of 3.5” HDDs which is, in fact, the largest portion of the HDD market.
Toshiba apparently jumped at the opportunity and even started bragging about future achievements, but now it is clear that the ramp will be inexistent in 2012, slow in 2013 and insignificant when compared with the production level achieved by WD and Seagate.
The Japanese company has even clearly stated that they would not be making enterprise Hybrid HDDs, as we presented here, and now it has reportedly confirmed that the production in the 3.5” line would start only in late 2012 with shipments in 2013.
Toshiba’s total HDD shipments are now less than a third of what Seagate is currently shipping and even less when compared with Western Digital’s production volume.
Toshiba hopes it will increase its production volume by a significant 30%, but this is the most optimistic prediction, and it is only about 4% of what WD and Seagate make as a whole.
So, just like WD recently said, the prices are not going down, and neither are Seagate and WD’s huge profits.