Just Two Tape Cartridge Manufacturers Remaining, Fujifilm and Sony

Two Japanese companies decided last months to stop manufacturing tape cartridge media (especially LTO): Maxell and TDK.

Maxell no more produces magnetic tapes representing 21% of global sales in FY08 and 7% in FY13. It also stopped its optical media business.

TDK withdraws LTO tape during the first quarter of 2014. That’s bad news for partner Imation, no more manufacturer of tapes and reseller of TDK media. But TDK continues to be in storage producing disk heads for HDDs.

So now just two manufacturers remain on the market, Fujifilm and Sony, OEMs of IBM and HP respectively according to US source.

In the past other computer tape media makers include 3M, Ampex/Quantegy, BASF/Emtec, Graham Magnetics, Kodak/Verbatim, Memorex, Pyral, Rhone-Poulenc Systems.

Magnetic technology business is really shrinking with now only two in tape media, three in tape drives (HP, IBM, Oracle StorageTek) and three in HDDs (Seagate, Toshiba, Western Digital).

Read also:
TDK to Withdraw From LTO Tape Business
Media Technology Corporation to be dissolved
LTO-6 Cartridges Available From Maxell
Following Fujifilm, Sony and TDK (Imation)