None of those major companies are laggards and none of them are settling for a place. The hard drive market is a fascinating one with the runners up not far behind (Hitachi GST at 16%, Toshiba/Fujitsu at 11% and Samsung at 10%). There is always the question mark of longevity given the constant pressure on releasing innovative ideas, but that is the gap that we fill. Taking the punter’s point of view, all of this leads to faster, more capacious hard drives with better interfaces and more reliability (maybe). Taking Q2 2011 figures (see pie-chart below) Western Digital shipped the most drives, accounting for 32% of the 167 million hard disk drives shipped in that period.īut Seagate have a claim to being number one by virtue of generating the highest revenue in that same time period. The once mighty Maxtor is now completely subsumed by Seagate, while Big Blue (IBM) drives are now purely Hitachi, having once been shoulder-to-shoulder buddies. There are now just five companies responsible for the vast bulk of hard drives coming into the world:Įvery one of them a great and established name, and each of them in the past responsible for gobbling up smaller competitors.

The latest figures from iSuppli reflect this dichotomy – the handful of world-class hard disk drive manufacturers have never been bigger or spread their reach more widely. The number of manufacturers that can afford to stay in the game has shrunk and they margins they operate on are also considerably thinner even while they continue to expand their empires both in traditional disk drives for computers and hard drives as portable storage for music players and external short-term archival devices. Ever wonder which hard drive manufacturer is top dog? Over the last couple of decades the hard disk drive industry has both grown and shrunk simultaneously.

Seagate or western digital for mac