El Segundo, Calif. – Seagate barely retained its first-place
ranking among hard-disk-drive manufacturers for the fourth quarter of 2009,
just fending off Western Digital, according to an iSuppli report.
iSuppli stated that Seagate shipped 49.9 million units during the
quarter, compared with WD’s 49.5 million. This gave Seagate 31 percent of the
market share to WD’s 30 percent.
Western Digital was unable to supplant its longtime rival despite
boosting shipments by 12 percent in the quarter, while Seagate managed just an
8 percent increase sequentially, compared with the third quarter of 2009.
iSuppli storage analyst Fang Zhan, expects Seagate to retain its
first-place position for the first quarter of 2010.
Hitachi Global Storage Technologies was a distant third, shipping
25.2 million units for 16 percent of the market.
Toshiba/Fujitsu and Samsung Electronics closed out the top five,
with 13 percent and 9 percent of the HDD market share, respectively.
iSuppli Table: Top 5 HDD Manufacturers in Q4 2009 (Ranking by Shipments in Millions of Units)
