Seagate to Roll Out Eleven New Products [WSJ6/7Page B4]
Seagate Technology, the world's largest maker of computer disk-drives, wants to extend its reach to new corners of the highly competitive industry.
Seagate next week will disclose 11 new products, including its first aimed at consumer hand-held devices, such as portable-music players and digital cameras. Officials said the unprecedented series of announcements was intended to demonstrate the breadth of Seagate's technological expertise.
"It puts Seagate in the position of having the broadest products and solutions in the industry, ever" said Jeff Loebbaka, a vice president of marketing. He said the new products would give Seagate, Scotts Valley, Calif., entries covering 95% of the $22 billion annual disk-drive business, up from 70% now.
Mr. Loebbaka said the products also demonstrate how the disk-drive market is fracturing into distinct segments serving corporate data centers, traditional desktop personal computers, laptop PCs, and consumer-entertainment devices, including game-players, video recorders and handhelds. Some of the new products won't be commercially available until early next year.
The biggest departure for Seagate will be a new one-inch diameter drive aimed at portable music players. The drives will hold up to 5 gigabytes of information, or the equivalent of 2,500 songs, said Jennifer Bradfield, a product-marketing director.
Until now, Seagate hasn't made drives smaller than the 2.5-inch models used in laptop computers. But the company is trying to tap into fast-growing consumer markets. Seagate officials said market researchers expect as many as 20 million one-inch drives to be sold next year, up from an estimated eight million this year. Competitors in the one-inch market will include Japan's Hitachi Ltd., and two newcomers, Cornice Inc., Longmont, Colo., and China's GS Magicstor.
For other consumer markets, Seagate is introducing a one-inch drive for digital cameras, and a higher-capacity disk for personal-video recorders, which can hold up to 400 hours of analog TV programs.
The other new products are aimed at PCs, laptops and corporate computer storage.
Seagate has been struggling financially in recent months, plagued by excess inventory and plunging prices. First-quarter net income fell 9%, and officials last week announced plans to eliminate nearly 3,000 jobs by the end of the year. |
