Due to the high HDD (Hard Drive Disk) demand from the enterprise sector and the launch of the next generation of storage technology and solutions, Seagate has made great achievement for fiscal 2018 as for HDD sales. And Seagate Technology expects its sales to remain strong in fiscal 2019. You may check this post for more information.
Driven by the high HDD (Hard Drive Disk) demand from the enterprise sector and the launch of the next generation of storage technology and solutions, Seagate remains strong growth on HDD business and has made great achievement for fiscal 2018. And Seagate Technology expects its sales to remain strong in fiscal 2019, according to company global sales senior vice president BS Teh.
Due to the rising storage demand from large-scale datacenters and enterprises, Seagate’s revenue rose 4% on year to US$ 11.2 billion. Its net profits are up to US$1.2 billion and the gross margin is 30.1% in fiscal 2018, which ended June 29.
The company’s HDD exabyte (EB) shipments also rose 29% on year in fiscal 2018. In the fourth quarter of fiscal 2018, EB shipments increased by 49% over the same period last year.
Despite that EB shipments have continued to grow, unit hard disk shipments actually drop by 5-6% in fiscal 2018. And unit hard disk shipments are expected to decline at a similar rate in fiscal year 2019 as PC users increasingly opt for SSDs, Teh pointed out.
It is known to all that SSD ( Solid State Drive) provides better performance and reliability over an HDD. Solid state drives (SSDs) use flash memory to deliver superior performance and durability. They are faster than HDD and more efficient. And nowadays, more and more PC users opt for SSD due to their fast speed.
As SSD has many advantages over HDD, many PC users have switched their system disk from HDD to SSD. In this case, on the one hand, Seagate is continuously committed to deepen its business in the HDD market. On the other hand, they are also launching SSD solutions to meet the growing demand for such products from PC and enterprise segments, Teh said.
The executive believes that Seagate will benefit from a partnership with Bain Capital to acquire Toshiba’s semiconductor unit. This will enable Seagate to ensure a stable supply of NAND flash memory through long-term contracts, and Seagate would be able to meet the SSD needs of businesses and consumer electronics products by taking advantage of Toshiba’s stable supply capacity.
Seeing that the company’s SSD revenue has increased 50% on year in the latest fiscal year, Teh continued that the completion of the deal with Toshiba will enable Seagate to deepen the development of SSD solutions to achieve long-term growth.
Although SSD provides better performance, an SSD is more expensive than an HDD in terms of dollar per GB. This is one of the biggest disadvantages of a solid-state drive. Compared with a solid-state drive, a hard disk drive with a similar storage capacity could be much cheaper.
Judging from HDD’s low total ownership costs, lower power consumption and high storage capacity, and the continued surge in large data centers, the demand for HDDs will still remain strong in fiscal 2019.
Recently Seagate just released its 14TB Exos X14 HDDs. Seagate is always known for the advancement of HDD products. The company has also developed HAMR (Heat-Assisted Magnetic Recording) and MACH.2 Multi Actuator technologies for the next-generation HDD manufacturing, which have achieved significant breakthrough and have also received well response from enterprise clients.
Teh said the new technology will be implemented in Seagate’s Exos Enterprise HDDs in the near future. The mass production of HAMR-based HDDs is expected to start at 2020, and its initial capacity is 20TB.