Seagate: Laptop HDDs to Sell Better than Desktop Ones by 2011

Storage specialist Seagate Technologies published a second-quarter revenue of $3.4 billion, with a net income of $403 million. Laptop sales had a tremendous impact over the final sales figures as they have
continued to grow for some years now.

The quiet battle between the notebook and the desktop PC segments is about to end with the mobile segment taking over. It is the logical result of progress, as more and more people want to have access to their data wherever they might roam.

More powerful portable PCs can easily compete with their desktop counterparts, but at the same time they can be easily carried into a laptop bag, a purse or, more recently, directly into a pocket. These are the main reasons that should slow down and even stop desktop PC sales and make their mobile rivals bloom.

The hard drive industry expects a further increase in the near future, and Seagate estimates that laptop hard disk drives shipments have increased about 20 percent from 2000 to 2007, from 25 million to almost 100 million last year. Seagate managed to push 50 more million hard disk drives on the market in three months alone.

"During the quarter, Seagate achieved record shipments and experienced some capacity constraints, underscoring the phenomenal growth of digital content in both the consumer and commercial markets," said Bill Watkins, Seagate's CEO. " The storage industry remains one of the world’s most important and exciting industries. We are confident Seagate’s vision, technology, and operational excellence will drive us to continued strong financial and operating performance in the March quarter and double-digit year-over-year growth."

Seagate estimates that notebooks and mobile devices will be the future, and will treat them accordingly. The company tipped the market that it is already working on a 500GB notebook drive that will arrive in the second quarter of 2008, while some other "consistent" surprises, such as the 750GB and 1TB drives, are slated to arrive in the late-2010 – early-2011 interval.