What are you looking for ?
Infinidat
Articles_top

Toshiba Storage Products Strategy

Expands HDD market share to 20% and SAS SSD to 30% in 2016.

The storage business is one of Toshiba Corporation‘s strategic focus businesses, alongside energy and healthcare.

Storage products, such as HDD and SSD, are the key components of the storage business, along with NAND flash, and we will make company’s business more competitive and larger by supporting cloud and social network service businesses that are expected to see expansion.

HDD responsible for storing large amount of data and SSD responsible for high speed processing are seen as co-existing, complementing each other’s characteristics. While offering a line-up of storage products, main focus will be the enterprise market and the following products and targets:

  • Near line HDD: Expand market share by increasing the capacity.
  • Enterprise SSD: Gain market share by utilizing advantages of in-house NAND flash memory and expanding line-up for high speed processing storage at data centers.

Through these measures, Toshiba aims to expand HDD market share to more than 20% in 2016 and aims to gain more than a 30% share of market of SSD (SAS interface) for data centers in the same year.

The company will expand into high value-added business area such as software for storage systems and solution (appliances), etc. as a way to further expand and improve the profitability of the storage products business.

Industry’s utilization of digital data will continue to grow. It is estimated that data generated worldwide will continue to expand, to reach 44ZB in 2020 annually. Most notably, in a movement that can be called the big data revolution, a new market is being born that requires new computer architecture to save and analyze petabyte-class large scale data at a time, at a very high speed.

Trends in storage products business

  • September 2009: Expand HDD business, specializing in products for such applications as PCs, automotive and portable music players.
  • October 2009: Enter enterprise HDD business by acquiring Fujitsu Limited’s HDD business
  • July 2011: Integrate memory and SSD business for consumers and industry to establish Semiconductor & Storage Company. Productize enterprise SSD by integrating the storage products business
  • May 2012: Line up 3.5-inch HDD for both consumer and enterprise by taking over part of the 3.5-inch HDD business from WDC

Comments

The strategy of Toshiba in storage is based on two types of products: HDDs and SSD.

HDDs

The company said:

  • "Near line HDD: Expand market share by increasing the capacity."
  • "Aims to expand HDD market share to more than 20% in 2016."

Comments:

  • The Japanese firm didn't say one world on HDDs for notebooks where it is a strong participant with around 23% of the worldwide market in 2Q14 according to Trendfocus. Does it mean that it will progressively stop this business thinking that SDDs will rapidly replace them?
  • Toshiba want to focus on nearline disk drives but it is now only at a maximum capacity of 5TB for them compared to 6TB for WD/HGST and recently 8TB by Seagate.
  • The company owned approximately 16% of the worldwide HDD market in 2Q14 for Trendfocus and it wants 4% more in the next two years which means a big effort if it is decreasing shipments of notebook drives.

SSDs

The company said:

  • "Enterprise SSD: Gain market share by utilizing advantages of in-house NAND flash memory and expanding line-up for high speed processing storage at data centers."
  • "Aims to gain more than a 30% share of market of SSD (SAS interface) (in 2016)."

Comments:

  • Once more no word on client SSDs which is surprising as the manufacturer is a big actor in PCs, notebooks and subnotebooks. Toshiba wants to concentrate on enterprise SAS SSDs and here the acquisition of OCZ Technology (SSD business) at the end of last year for $35 million will help to get a know-how in controllers and using its own flash chips - being the only company in the world manufacturing HDDs, SSDs as well as flash ships.
  • Trendfocus calculates that Toshiba represents about 7% of the gobal market of SAS enterprises SSDs. To reach 30% in 2017 is a huge challenge.
  • And curiously nothing about PCIe SSDs, the fastest growing sector in enterprise SDDs.

Articles_bottom
AIC
ATTO
OPEN-E