History (1994): End of 1.3-Inch HDD Kittyhawk From HP

Hewlett-Packard Co. and their Japanese manufacturing subcontractor Citizen Watch Co. (in Tokyo), have decided to abandon Kittyhawk, the smallest HDD in the world.

With a 1.3-inch form factor, it was no bigger than a little matchbox. The product, launched in June 1992, impressed experts with its compactness.

Certain companies, including Aura Associates, Maxtor, MiniStor Peripherals, and Sony, wondered at the time if it would be to their advantage to enter the market as well. But, Kittyhawk’s size turned out to be too small for its time.

The first 14 or 21.4MB models were followed by a third one of 42.8MB in March 1993.

Due to insufficient capacities, it was unable to handle basic data processing applications. Even if the unit could adapt to a PCMCIA slot, it was swept away, on the one hand by 1.8-inch drives with far superior capacities and on the other hand, by the faster flash cards.

Hewlett-Packard counted on other markets (automobile, fax, printers, cameras, factory automation applications, etc.), but failed to achieve the expected level of success.

In addition the unit was quite pricey, beginning at $250 in OEM Q50,000. OEMs, such as the now defunct EO Inc. (Mountain View, CA) or Dauphin Technology (Lombard, IL), were rare and ordered only limited quantities. Avatar Systems Corp. (Milpitas, CA) used the Kittyhawk in its 2.5-inch removable cartridge drive. Hewlett-Packard, however, did not choose its own 1.3-inch unit for its OmniBook, preferring to use a 1.8-incn HDD instead.

No more than about 50,000 have been shipped. This is a far cry from Jan Bell, Hewlett-Packard disk memory division marketing manager’s claim: “By year end Citizen will reach a manufacturing rate of 150,000 units per month.”

In short, the Kittyhawk venture has crash-landed. This does not mean, however, that the 1.3-inch form factor has disappeared for good, but Hewlett-Packard simply saw it too soon, too small.

This article is an abstract of news published on the former paper version of Computer Data Storage Newsletter on issue 79, published on August 1994.