Western Digital has been moving forward on the harddrive market over the last year, but even though it increased its market shares big time in 2009 it wasn’t enough to threaten Seagate as the world’s largest harddrive manufacturer.Several had been betting that WD would surpass its competitor in Q4, but when the smoke lifted and numbers for the year had been tallied it just got close, but not quite all the way.
During Q4 WD shipped 49.5 million harddrives, a 12% increase from Q3, while Seagate managed to move out 49.9 million drives during the same period. At the same time it had a head start from the preceding three quarters and ended 2009 with a total market share of 34 percent. With WD chasing them at 30 percent.
Seagate Barracuda XT with SATA 6Gbp
This is pretty astonishing since WD and Seagate together have 64 percent of the total market and both increased their revenues and sales from Q3 to Q4 2009.
The leading positions are expected to remain the same during the start of 2010 where Seagate will keep the lead with a tiny margin.
Other companies in the top 5 are Hitachi, Toshiba/Fujitsu and Samsung.
