Since the introduction of its 9-disk helium-sealed nearline HDD (MG07) in late 2017, Toshiba’s nearline-class HDD exabyte shipments have nearly tripled. The remarkable growth in exabytes shipped is attributable to Toshiba’s time to market on leading-edge capacity nearline HDDs. In 2CQ ’19, helium-based nearline HDD exabytes surpassed that of air-based nearline HDDs, and this delta will become increasingly larger as time progresses.
During this same period, Toshiba’s total nearline average capacity has more than doubled. Moreover, the projected rise in higher-capacity nearline HDD volumes will fuel this projected upward momentum in average capacity through 2020 and beyond.
The success of the helium-based HDD designs has contributed to the steady rise in Toshiba’s overall market share. Based on TRENDFOCUS, Inc. preliminary 3CQ19 report, Toshiba has more than doubled its market share within three years, closing the gap on the competition. All of this have been accomplished during extremely challenging market conditions – a testament to Toshiba’s approach to product design and acceptance Toshiba’s product portfolio has received from major customers.
The result is that Toshiba is leading the charge in the high-capacity nearline HDD market. Hard disk drives have been and remain the most cost-effective random-access storage medium available in the market. At roughly 12 times less expensive than solid state memory (according to various publicly published reports), the cost competitive advantage will help Toshiba keep up the insatiable storage demand of the cloud datacenter companies.
Disclaimer
The views and opinions expressed in this blog are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of Toshiba America Electronic Components, Inc.