Drives not just for PCs

Staff -- Purchasing, 11/18/2004

As manufacturers shrink the size of their hard disk drives, buyers at consumer electronics (CE) companies will find them appearing more and more on their bill of materials in the coming years.

While hard drives on consumer electronics equipment accounted for only about 5% of all drive shipments in 2003, that percentage will grow to 33% by 2008, according to market researcher InStat/MDR, as they will be used on a wide variety of CE equipment including digital cameras, cell phones and camcorders.

"Hard drive manufacturers are increasingly looking to the consumer electronics market as a strategic segment of their business, says Cindy McCurley, an industry analyst with In-Stat/MDR. "In the past, a typical home had only a hard drive on their PC. In the future, homes will have an increasing number of hard drives, especially in consumer electronics," she says.

Hard drives will be used more in the home, she says, as consumers accumulate more music and video content and need to store it. Use of hard drives in equipment will grow because the physical size of hard drives has shrunk.

Products using 3.5-inch, 2.5-inch, 1.8-inch, and microdrive (1-inch and smaller) hard drives can be found worldwide. The 3.5-inch drives are the most popular because they are the most inexpensive and have high capacities. They are generally used in video game consoles and personal video recorders.

Personal digital assistants, global positioning satellites (GPS) devices, digital cameras and camcorders and mobile phones will all begin to integrate microdrives and offer varying capacities.