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).
