Hard drive costs now under 10 cents per MB

The first hard drive in 1956 was the IBM 305 RAMAC, and cost $10,000 per MB - it had a capacity of 5MB.

But now the cost, Fox said, is something under 10 cents per MB and that he said, is a retail figure, including tax.

Average home will have 15 hard drives, although most households don't know it. There are some hard drives in cars and they're starting to appear in mobile phones.

Hard drive vendors are getting overexcited about the potential of hard drives in the mobile market. Although 260 million units shipped last year, the figures for mobile phones far exceed that number,Mo< The consumer market place doesn't want to pay the price for high speed access and Hitachi's CE ATA interface is specifically designed for handhelds. People don't need 150Mbps on a handheld. Samsung introduced a mobile phone with a hard drive earlier this month.

There is a problem - mobile phone manufacturers don't want to pay too much for hard drives because it drives up the bill of materials.

He said that the 3.5-inch drive factor is decreasing, and the real growth is in the 2.5-inch notebook. The car and the handheld consumer electronic markets are the additional spice, he said, that will help grow the market. Automotive vendors are adding hard drives and flat panel screens into the car.