Hitachi Global Storage Technology (Hitachi GST) expects its 2005 sales volume of 1-inch microdrives to grow by more than 200%, while its 1.8-inch model sales should grow 300% from last year. The company’s Director of Consumer Electronics Marketing, John Osterhout, recently spoke with DigiTimes about the company’s sales growth.
Q: What does Hitachi GST expect for its HDD shipments this year?
A: This year, the company expects shipments of consumer electronics hard disks will double from eight million in 2004. Shipments of microdrives will see a much larger increase than models larger than 2.5 inches, due to growing demand for portable consumer-electronics devices such as MP3 players, MP3 handsets and DVD recorders.
Q: What are your main marketing plans and strategies for attaining 100% growth?
A: Hitachi GST will take advantage of our complete product lineup, which in terms of size and form factor covers the 1-inch to 3.5-inch segments, enabling us to offer one-stop shopping. We also have more than 2,200 patents and are competitive enough in product quality and time to market as compared with our main competitors. To meet the needs of OEM and ODM clients, Hitachi GST plans to set up several design centers in China, with locations in Beijing, Shanghai, Kunshan and Shenzhen. In addition, a factory in Shenzhen will be completed in the fourth quarter of this year.
Q: How will Hitachi GST cope with price competition from Chinese microdrive makers?
A: As microdrives can be used in a large variety of consumer-electronics applications, we will focus on products with high-technology requirements and those that require large storage capacities. The company will also upgrade the capacity of our microdrives to 8-10GB in the second half of this year, up from 4-6GB currently.
John Osterhout, Director, Consumer Electronics Marketing, Hitachi GST.
Editor’s note: In making corrections to this story, we deleted some data that was out of context and Hitachi provided some additional information. In 2003, Hitachi shipped a total of 43.4 million hard disks globally. Output in 2004 grew over 7% to 46.6 million units, including eight million consumer electronics disks.
This interview was translated and summarized from a Chinese original.
Article translated by Adam Hwang and edited by Michael McManus
