14 DAY TRIAL // Wester Digital announced the end of a very strong fiscal year. During the last quarter of the 2007 fiscal year, the company shipped no less than 24.9 million hard disk drive units, a serious jump from the 19.2 million units from a year ago. For this year, Western Digital registered $5.5 billion in revenues and an additional operating income of $415 million. These results represent an increase in revenues of 26 percent over the previous year, with a unit shipment growth of 32 percent.
Just like in other years, Western Digital is looking to expand on newer hard disk drive markets, already having jumped from 29 percent to 43 percent market coverage with products like "hard drives for notebook PCs, consumer electronics, enterprise applications and WD branded products", according to a press release from the company. These results show that Western Digital is keeping pace with the current hard disk drive market leader Seagate, which acquired Maxtor last year, according to the Web-based news site TGDaily: "Seagate last week said that it has sold 159.2 million hard drives during its fiscal year 2006, with revenues of $11.4 billion and a net profit of $913 million. Seagate sold 39.2 million hard drives in the quarter ended June 30".
"We are very pleased with the performance of the WD team and the WD model in fiscal 2007," said John Coyne, president and chief executive officer of WD in the same company press release. "Our efficient organization has leveraged significant investments over the last five years into a strong technology portfolio and compelling products. We are well-positioned to address the diverse and growing use of hard drives in commercial and consumer markets for years to come."
As WD purchased the company Komag, a media supplier, the race for the position of hard disk drive market leader with Seagate becomes more and more interesting and the CEO of Western digital said that they "remain confident in the strategic benefits and synergies that will accrue to WD over the long term by having an internal media operation".