14 DAY TRIAL // For a very long time, Seagate led the hard disk drive market in both the areas of total shipments and revenues. All the while, Western Digital, though quite adept itself, was never really able to topple the former, mostly because Seagate's marketing strategy, and the focus on the enterprise front, propelled its sales. Over the past several months, however, Western Digital's shipment volume grew, mostly because of the good performance of the lower-cost segment, leading to a total of 51.1 million units during the first quarter of 2010.
WD's share increased by 3.2% compared to the 49.5 million in the previous quarter. Seagate, on the other hand, sold 50.3 million units, 0.8% more than the 49.9 million recorded during the fourth quarter of 2010. Meanwhile, Hitachi got third place, followed by Toshiba and Fujitsu on fourth and Samsung on fifth positions. No doubt WD is proud of finally exceeding, for the first time, Seagate's on-quarter shipments, but the fact remains that it still hasn't managed to snatch away revenue leadership.
Though it sold less HDDs, Seagate paid more attention to the enterprise segment, which yielded a better income. All in all, the company managed a sum of US$3.1 billion, significantly more than WD's US$2.64 billion. Still, iSupply believes that the latter will continue to leverage this low-cost model and will pick up more business, eventually undermining Seagate's dominance. Product competitiveness, innovation and maintaining existent businesses will be the deciding factors in who gets, or keeps, the stronger foothold.
“Despite the switch in the shipment rankings, the head-to-head competition between the two giants will Seagate Technology continue, and Seagate will experience pressure from Western Digital in the battle for the top market position in the future,” said Fang Zhang, analyst for storage systems at iSuppli. “In the meantime, both Seagate and Western Digital continue to operate under tight capacity, with the situation easing somewhat in the second quarter due to slight seasonal declines in overall shipments.”