167 Million HDDs Shipped In Q2, WD Leads
Hard drive manufacturers shipped 167.1 million hard drives in the second quarter of this year, up 4% from 160.5 million units in Q1, according to market research firm IHS.
WD leads the market with 32% share, followed by Seagate with 31%. Including the recently announced acquisition of Hitachi Global Storage (HGST), WD was at 48% share, while the addition of Samsung takes Seagate to 42%. The only other major HDD manufacturer left is Toshiba/Fujitsu with 11% share.
IHS said that WDC had record shipments of 53.8 million drives during the quarter and revenue of $2.4 billion. Seagate shipped only 52.3 million units, but raked in $2.9 billion thanks to its position in the enterprise market.
"Despite some disruptions resulting from the Japan quake disaster in March and the continuing decline of netbook sales because of tablet devices, HDD shipments rose during the second quarter, with each hard drive maker meeting its revenue forecast," said Fang Zhang, analyst for storage systems at IHS. "Growth was achieved partially from a pull-in of orders by PC manufacturers fearing a potential shortage of components from the quake’s impact, and also by suppliers utilizing less expensive sea freight to ship goods instead of costly air freight."
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Douglas Perry was a freelance writer for Tom's Hardware covering semiconductors, storage technology, quantum computing, and processor power delivery. He has authored several books and is currently an editor for The Oregonian/OregonLive.
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pbrigido I may be in the minoroty, but WD drives have always given me problems. I tried a Samsung and have been a fan ever since.Reply -
lunyone Love WD HD's. Have had a few issues with Seagate HD's in the last year or so, so I'm staying away from them at this point. Might score on the Samsung F3 1TB HD soon, before Seagate screws them up, but time will tell.Reply -
ZenithCS I also had a few issues with Seagate HDDs but only with 7200.7 and 7200.11 series.Reply
Now I'm using both WD and Seagate in my system and they are pretty solid. Nothing has died on me yet. -
inerax I have many WD drives. like 15+. ranging from 10+ years old to 2 months old.Reply
I have never had a problem with ANY of them.
Only problem i have is with the WD external drives. takes it apart, pull the HDD. working fine. their HDD's are great. -
weatherdude It looks like the hard drive market is consolidating into mainly two companies. That seems to be the way it goes in the PC component world. I wonder if it's a good thing for consumers.Reply -
eddieroolz WD HDDs have been quite good for me so far. Only 1 failure while 3 Seagates failed in 5 months.Reply -
dalmvern I think that WD does a better job marketing their product than their competitors. Aside from marketing, they are also huge in the external hard drive market so when you have a WD external hard drive, the first thought for the layman would be to buy a WD HDD.Reply -
captaincharisma since my cheap option (maxtor) is gone. i have always stuck with WD drives. never had any problems with them at all. im staying away from seagate thoughReply