WD Sells 62M HDDs, Wants More Excitement For Windows 8
Western Digital (WD) delivered a solid quarterly result by current standards but reflected a cautious stance toward the potential positive impact of Windows 8 on the PC industry.
Right now, it appears WD is counting more on the second generation of Windows 8 products based on Intel's Haswell processors rather than the current product generation.
WD sold 62.5 million HDDs in Q3, up from 57.8 million one year ago. Revenue was up from $2.7 billion to $4.0 billion, while the profit dropped from $260 million to $239 million.
The company projected a total market volume of about 140 million HDDs for Q4, which is rather low given the fact that Microsoft is launching Windows 8. The Q2 market was at about 157 million units, but declined, according to WD, to 140 million in Q3, which means that the company does not see an uptick for Q4.
Asked about Windows 8, president Stephen Milligan said that there has not been enough excitement for Windows 8 products. "We're trying to do our best in terms of some of these hybrid designs and smaller form factor designs that maybe enable our customers to have a little bit of excitement back to the product set," he said.
The opportunity is clearly seen in hybrid drives, but the products that count apparently will not be in the market this year. "What we're doing right now is providing engineering samples to our customers," Milligan said. "In the first half of calendar year 2013, we will be supplying call samples and gearing up for volume kind of activity the back half of 2013." This timing aligns closely with the launch of Intel's Haswell processor in Q2 of next year.

Also, in the last year I have purchased 4 SSDs, and 0 HDDs. This should be a clear message to where the market is moving. With large (2TB) reliable SSDs becoming available for server markets, it is really going to eat into your favorite cash cow. Enterprise SSDs are quieter, cooler, insanely faster, and just as reliable as enterprise HDDs, while not costing much more money. If nobody buys HDDs for home system drives, or laptop drives, or servers, that leaves the cheap home storage market, which has low profit margins... sucks to be a HDD company...
Also, in the last year I have purchased 4 SSDs, and 0 HDDs. This should be a clear message to where the market is moving. With large (2TB) reliable SSDs becoming available for server markets, it is really going to eat into your favorite cash cow. Enterprise SSDs are quieter, cooler, insanely faster, and just as reliable as enterprise HDDs, while not costing much more money. If nobody buys HDDs for home system drives, or laptop drives, or servers, that leaves the cheap home storage market, which has low profit margins... sucks to be a HDD company...
1TB/platter would be nice, let's break 200MB/s !
TLER support is nice, but your 3TB $378 FYYZ/FYYG RE drives are outperformed by seagate's 3TB $145 1TB/platter consumer drive(which is easy to get for $20+ discounts).
Platter densities seem to have stagnated, and what's with all the 10K rpm drives having tiny platters ? what about a 1TB/platter 10K rpm drive, sequentials would be incredible on that ...
It made the price increase that persist even though they already recovered many times their loses.
For the average consumer that holds true, but power users and professionals need more storage.
I'm constantly hitting the ceiling in my work laptop due to the 120GB space of the ssd in it.
For me a hybrid drive clearly is the better choice. I've got a seagate 750gb drive in my system at home, because frankly I can't afford to get adequate ssd storage and thus a hybrid was the obvious choice as the last 2tb drive failed. However 750gb is still on the small side, and I need to avoid installing too many of my steam games at once. Previously I just installed every game so it was ready when I wanted to play. That luxury is not there with a hybrid, and completely impossible with a small ssd.
I've had serveral builds for other people where I've had to link a mechanical disk to the %programfiles(x86)%\Steam folder in order to make the system viable at all.
Anyhow for a nongamer misses johnson who just wants some facebook and a few movies, it works. But they probably would rather spend their money on makeup or something than on an ssd
I wouldn't mind replacing a few smaller drives also. I have a few 500GB & less I'd like to move to 2TB 2platter drives for internals. But I won't pay for those until they're under $75. You have to realize the last time I bought my 1TB drives (internals) pre-flood I paid under $60 for seagates (2platter, as I don't buy any more than 2 platters when inside and running all day). My externals only get turned on for an hour or so at a time as I dump from my internals (I suspect they'll last for 10yrs like this...LOL as my others have). I have 9 externals myself, and that doesn't count my parents who could also use a few 3TB drives. WD/SEAGATE, I hope you're reading this. I'm guessing my family alone could purchase up to 10 currently and you're just screwing yourself out of sales. Last purchases in my family were two SSD's...ROFL. Currently looking at 256GB/512GB sSD's for black friday which again will put of any mechanical purchase until above prices are met. My dad and I currently have 128GB drives but we'd like to go back to dual boots with an added 256/512each.
Windows 8 will, to some degree, undermine the demand for SSDs for the average consumer. It's not a full substitute, since you still have the same load times for stuff, but it definitely brings the field closer to level.
When somone tlls me that "you wont need over 2TB of space", my answer is always "not in the next 6 months".
I belive in having all your date on YOUR computer, so that YOU can do the backups, and YOU can choose what happens to it.
Not like all those cloud systems where if you actually read the terms of agreement, you realize that those kinky photos you have and dont want anyone to have, actually are not even your property.
personally i am willing to jump on a 4tb drive the moment they hit 200$, i want to replace all 5 current harddrives i have, and have room left over.
Sandy and Ivy are fine. Win 8 doesn't need Haswell for people to hate it. ;o)