History (1997): Seagate WW Leader in Disks Heads and Media

Magnetic disk storage will show record growth in 1997, both in terms of unit shipments and revenues.

Unit demand is estimated at approximately 135 million drives in 1997, up from 107 million in 1996.

As for components, heads shipments were seven fold, and media three- to four-fold that of rigid disk drives themselves.

Rigid disk drive magnetic head production for 1997 will approach one billion heads with disk media about 500 million, according to the 1996/1997 Rigid Disk Drive Head/Media Market and Technology Report (315 pages, $975), published by Peripheral Research Corp. (Santa Barbara, CA).

Based on current demand trends, these shipment numbers should double again by the year 2004.

Subcomponents further down the food chain, such as suspensions, leadwires and mounting pads, will be over 1 billion units in 1997.

Seagate is the WW leader in heads (34%) and media (23%). Current production is at approximately one million heads per day. Seagate will be increasing that number through the balance of the year, as will the other leading head suppliers.

This article is an abstract of news published on the former paper version of Computer Data Storage Newsletter on issue 112, published on May 1997.