According to The Inquirer, Japanese companies are rapidly increasing production of their small hard drives as, unsurprisingly, the demand for tiny storage that will fit in portable electronics increases rapidly. Toshiba is planning on ramping up production of its tiny 0.85-inch hard drives to a rate of almost 200,000 a month, while Hitachi will increase its 1-inch drive production to two million units per quarter. Global hard drive markers shipped 260 million units in fiscal 2003, 80 percent of which went into servers and PCs. The remaining percentage, which goes into home electronics, are expected to grow by 50% each year — I’m betting it will be even greater than that once the manufacturers can get enough tiny units into the channels. Two years from now there won’t be a single smartphone announced without a hard drive.
Read – Toshiba to ship 200,000 a month 0.85-inch hard drives [TheInquirer]
