HGST Zooms Past 100 Million Mobile Hard Drive Shipments

[[Coi] Mr.CLuBBeR]

Demand for ultra-thin hard drives is growing

We keep waiting for the day when solid state drives (SSDs) supplant mechanical hard disk drives (HDDs), and even though prices for NAND flash memory storage has dropped significantly in the past year or so, HDDS still offer more storage space for the dollar. Combined with notebook makers offering lower cost models, the demand for HDDs just keeps growing, and that's just fine by HGST.
Western Digital's subsidiary announced it has now shipped more than 100 million Travelstar Z Series 2.5-inch hard drives measuring 7mm thick. HGST is an active player in the thin HDD space, having also launched its new 2.5-inch 1TB Travelstar Z5K1000, supposedly the industry's fastest 7mm 5400 RPM HDD with "best-in-class shock robustness," a critical characteristic for Ultrabooks and other thin laptops.
"The 7.0 mm 2.5-inch mobile market continues to be a strategic space for HGST as evidenced by our record 100M shipments," said Brendan Collins, vice president of product marketing, HGST. "With the addition of our new 1TB Travelstar Z5K1000, HGST continues to offer the market’s broadest 5400 and 7200 RPM 7.0 mm 2.5-inch hard drive portfolio to meet the needs of a diverse mobile computing and storage segment."
HGST points to an IHS iSuppli report in which the market research firm predicts the demand for thin HDDs will reach 133 million units by 2017. Meanwhile, the demand for thick 9.5mm drives is starting to wane and is forecasted to dip to 79 million in 2017.
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