Seagate to push SSD products; but will not forget HDD

Hard disk drive (HDD) players such as Seagate, have been pushing into the solid state drive (SSD) market via acquisitions or forming strategic alliances with SSD partners. Although demand for SSDs from the notebook market has been rising, Seagate senior vice president of global sales BS Teh believes that SSDs and HDDs will co-exist and develop together.

Teh expects nearly 90% of worldwide notebooks shipped to feature built-in SSDs within next five years. Demand for SSDs is likely to replace a large proportion of HDD demand, and Seagate will become more aggressive in its development of SSDs. However, the company will continue to put resources into HDD R&D as the larger storage capacity of HDDs will still allow the product line to enjoy market demand.

Seagate recently spent US$450 million to acquire the flash business of LSI, an affiliate of Avago, and has already shipped over 20 million SSDs. Seagate is planning to launch a 60TB SSD in 2017.

In addition to the PC market, Seagate has also been expanding in the surveillance, gaming, consumer electronics and datacenter markets. These non-PC businesses together already contribute over 40% of Seagate's revenues, and the company is looking to raise the percentage to 50% in the next three years.

http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20170224PD215.html