Seagate acquired competitor Maxtor during 2006 and one of the reasons for this was Maxtor’s strong position on the external harddrive market. iSuppli has now published a survey of 2006 harddrive shippings and Seagate has through its acquisition been able to grab an even bigger portion of the market. In 2006 the market shares grew to 33.1%, from 28.7% in 2005. Second place is held by Western Digital (19.6%) followed by Hitachi GST (16.1%), Samsung (10%) and Toshiba (9%). A slow but steady trend among all manufacturers have been that the really small harddrives, especially 1″, is being replaced by flash-based solutions.
Table by iSuppli
Even if flash-based storage is becoming more and more popular it is still far from a threat for the bigger harddrives and the market seems to be heading towards a bright future as the demand is increasing at a steady rate.
