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| Rob Pait, Marketing Director of Seagate, Affirms the Development of Hard Drives |
In response to Samsung’s claim that flash memory will dominate the storage market, Seagate, the world’s leading hard drive manufacturer, has issued a statement asserting that hard drive technology cannot be replaced anytime soon.
“When Samsung says hard drives are outdated, I believe they are being incredibly irresponsible, short-sighted, and simply not telling the truth,” said Rob Pait, Seagate’s Global Consumer Electronics Marketing Director, in an interview at the CEATEC technology fair in Japan. “Perhaps one day, flash technology will be all we need, but that will only come when we can book a tour to Mars.”
The statement regarding the dominance of flash technology was made by Hwang Chang-Gyu, President of Samsung’s Semiconductor Product Division, last month when the company introduced a new 16 Gb flash memory chip. Similar to Rob Pait’s reaction, Hwang’s comments were not entirely surprising to the industry, as Samsung is one of the largest flash memory chip manufacturers in the world. However, the Samsung leader’s forecast did not mention an emerging battle in the mid-range storage market, particularly concerning mobile electronic devices.
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| Hwang Chang-Gyu, President of Samsung Semiconductor Division, Promotes Flash Products |
In recent years, the price of flash memory devices has decreased rapidly while simultaneously confirming ever-increasing storage capacities. When Apple launched the iPod Mini in early 2004, the company chose to use hard drives for their music players, but as the price of flash storage fell by 40%, Apple began to roll out the iPod Nano, which was recently released and utilized flash memory technology with storage performance comparable to the hard drive versions.
As one of the suppliers of 1-inch hard drives for Apple to integrate into the iPod, Seagate remains confident that Apple’s decision to switch to flash will not “kill” or have any significant impact on their business of 1-inch hard drives.
Meanwhile, Samsung is actively promoting its plans to dominate the PC market with the release of a 16 GB solid-state drive based on flash chips. These products will feature a parallel ATA interface similar to hard drives and will be sold in enclosures the size of 2.5-inch or 1.8-inch drives, allowing consumers to directly replace their existing drives.
