Toshiba Celebrates as Cumulative Production of 1.8-inch HDD Climbs to 40 Million



    Toshiba Corporation, the industry leader in small form factor and
    high capacity hard disk drives (HDD), today announced that it would
    achieve cumulative production of 40 million 1.8-inch HDD(1) on October
    7th, 2006.

    Toshiba entered 1.8-inch HDD market in 2000, at that time
    concentrating on PC peripheral applications, and in 2002 pioneered
    penetration of the consumer electronics sector and new applications in
    personal mobile products. Since then Toshiba has consistently won the
    largest share in the market for this increasingly popular drive(2).
    The achievement of cumulative production of 40 million drives is the
    result of Toshiba's proactive promotion of new markets.

    Toshiba has long recognized that leadership and success in the HDD
    market rests on robust, reliable products that support two must-have
    characteristics: small size and high capacity. This has inspired the
    company to promote innovations in such data-density-boosting advances
    as giant magnetoresistive read heads and, most recently, high
    recording density perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR), and to
    promote miniaturization that has seen the company take the lead in
    pioneering 2.5-inch, 1.8-inch and 0.85-inch drives.

    With its PMR technology, Toshiba has set new industry benchmarks
    in disk capacity in both 1.8- and 2.5-inch drives. The company
    first(3) applied the technology to 1.8-inch drives in 2005, and then
    introduced it to 2.5-inch drives, a market-leading initiative that
    allowed the company to further consolidate its technological
    advantages. Cumulative production of high capacity PMR drives passed 1
    million units in the middle of September.

    Toshiba will continue to meet needs for higher recording densities
    and data capacity by applying PMR technology to its product line up.
    Toshiba will also continue to offer highly reliable, cutting-edge
    products. The company's latest HDD products, including 1.8-inch HDD,
    will be on display at CEATEC Japan, from October 3 to October 7 at
    Makuhari Messe near Tokyo.

    About Toshiba's HDD business

    Toshiba has been the industry leader in small form factor HDD
    through continued introduction of 2.5-inch HDD in 1990, 1.8-inch in
    2000, and 0.85-inch in 2004. Toshiba has also led the way in bringing
    HDD to new fields and providing products for special applications
    requiring higher levels of performance. For example, Toshiba was
    aggressive to develop HDD offering the vibration and temperature
    resistance required in automotive applications, and has won
    approximately 80% share of the automotive HDD market(2), and achieved
    cumulative 4-million shipment of HDDs for automotive application.

    The company also supports high-end notebook PC's that needs large
    capacity HDD. In 2.5-inch HDD, Toshiba continues to lead the industry
    through such breakthrough products as the 200GB MK2035GSS, which
    offers the highest areal density yet achieved(4) using PMR technology
    and the industry largest capacity(5) in 9.5mm-thick drives, and the
    160GB MK1637GSX, which features a rotation speed of 5400 rpm.

    Cumulative production achieved total of 150 million units for all
    the HDD product line-up.

    Note: HDD capacity is calculated on the basis of 1-gigabyte
    =1-billion bytes

    (1) Hard Disk Drive

    (2) Based on the research by Techno Systems Research "HDD market
    present condition and trends 2006 2Q", "Optical Disk devices for
    automotive application 2006".

    (3) As of May 2005 (Toshiba data).

    (4) The world's highest commercially available areal density, as
    of June 5, 2006 (Toshiba data).

    (5) The industry's largest commercially available capacity in a
    9.5mm high HDD, as of June 5, 2006 (Toshiba data).