Showa Denko to Supply Magnetic Hard Disks to Seagate

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Showa Denko to Supply Magnetic Hard Disc to Seagate

Showa Denko K.K. (SDK) is to begin supplying hard-disc platters to Seagate of the U.S.A. from this summer, according to a media report. The formal contract will be signed soon. It is said SDK’s expertise in forming 1.5x higher density on data recording layers than rivals, making the HDD package thinner in the same memory capacity. In fact, the standard HDD unit’s thickness of 9.5mm will be reduced to 7mm, making laptop PCs thinner. Adding Seagate to its customers, SDK is to supply discs to the big three HDD makers in the world, US’s Western Digital and Toshiba. Industry watchers estimate 300 million to 400 million hard-disc platters per year are sold to HDD makers with an annual growth of about 5%. SDK is said to have about 75% share of the world’s hard-disc platters, Fuji Denki some 25% and a remaining bit was supplied by Hoya. SDK intends to boost its share with this additional supply agreement.