Western Digital reclaims the spot as the largest hard disk drive supplier, report says

Western Digital has won back the top spot in the global ranking of hard disk drive shipments in the second quarter 2012, said a new report from IHS iSuppli. The top position went to Seagate temporarily when WD’s Thailand plant was hit by flooding last year.

The monsoon flooding in Thailand destroyed some parts of WD’s plant for which the company had to halt operations at the site temporarily. Seagate, its biggest competitor was the least affected by the disaster and had a temporary manufacturing edge over Western Digital. It held the title for two quarters in the last one year.

Western Digital recovered fully after the aftermaths of the flooding started to wear off. The global supply had dried up during and after the flooding but Seagate and Toshiba, a Japanese vendor, kept the loop revolving.

This previous quarter Western Digital accounted for 45 percent of the market share in terms of supply with an increase of 10 percent. Following the trail was Seagate with a 42 percent share and an increase of 7.9 percent. Toshiba grabbed the rest 13 percent market share.

“Western Digital lost its No. 1 unit shipment ranking to Seagate in Q4, 2012, after flooding in Thailand damaged its manufacturing facility,” Fang Zhang, an IHS storage systems analyst, said in the firm’s report. “The company now has fully recovered from the disaster, allowing it to sharply increase shipments of hard-disk drives for consumer notebook PCs. Western Digital is on track to retain the top spot in shipments and revenue for the third quarter.”

Seagate is still the biggest vendor of hard disk drives in the corporate market and due to higher profitability is still the top dog in the world.

The 2011 flood was however, not the only concern to experts when analysing the HDD market. The advent and crazy adoption of tablet computers like Apple’s iPad and Amazon’s Kindle Fire has also dented its supply and demand equation. Tablet PCs boast solid-state flash drives and though WD manufactures them as well, the profitability and demand is quite low.

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Posted by Usman Khalid on Aug 30 2012. Filed under Sci-Tech. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.