Huge hard drive growth with portable devices
Huge hard drive growth with portable devices
A recent report has revealed that hard drives are set to be used more commonly inside homes as makers of consumer electronics, such as personal video recorders and music players have been buying drives for their products.
The report, conducted by the In-Stat/MDR, reveals that although hard drives in the consumer electronics segment represents about 5 percent of the total hard drive market in 2003, it will represent about 33 percent of the market by 2008.
Cindy McCurley, an industry analyst with In-Stat/MDR, said: "Hard drive manufacturers are increasingly looking to the Consumer Electronics (CE) market as a strategic segment of their business. While in the past, a typical home had only a PC hard drive, in the future; homes will have an increasing number of hard drives, especially in consumer electronics.
"At the same time, as consumers increasingly accumulate more music and video content, demand for more drives and higher capacities will increase. In fact, consumers, who may have previously been unfamiliar with hard drive technology, are beginning to consider hard drive capacity as an important factor in their purchasing process."
The latest Apple iPod is a good example of this current trend. The most recent version can contain up to 60 gigabytes of capacity, that includes storing up to 15,000 songs or 25,000 photographs.
The In-Stat/MDR report also includes personal digital assistants, Global Positioning System devices, digital cameras and mobile phones. It believes that these will all begin to integrate "microdrives" too and offer larger capacities.
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