Hard drives start to make money again

A REPORT FROM market research firm Isuppli reckons that hard drive firms have seen their profits start to rise.

According to a report from the firm, the hard drive vendors shipped 138 million drives in Q3 2007, up 19.6 per cent from 115 million units in Q2 of last year.

Seagate is showing respectable gross margins of 24.6 per cent, while Western Digital managed 18.4 per cent.

Why? Well, senior analyst Krishna Chander reckons that the electronics market for gizmos is spurring the growth. That sector represented 17 per cent in Q3 last year.

So too, HDTV is helping the market for digital video recorders to grow.

But let’s not forget the humble PC because enterprise secondary storage external drives are selling pretty well.

Chander thinks HDD revenues in Q4 were around $9.3 billion, and this year is looking pretty good too, he reckons. µ

L’INQ
Isuppli