Chinese Start-Up Guizhou HDD Technology New Manufacturer of HDDs

From Jean-Jacques Maleval, Editor, StorageNewsletter.com (April 1, 2018)

According to several Asian reliable sources, Guizhou HDD Technology Co., Ltd. in Guizhou, China, a mountainous province at the Eastern end of the Yungui Platea, is going to manufacture 2.5-inch notebook and high-capacity 3.5-inch HDDs.

$10 billion has been invested partly by Chinese governement into the start-up.

The HDD factory is currently in construction.

In the past, there was two other Chinese HDD makers, ExcelStor Technology (founded in 2001 and acquired by Iomega in 2007 then by Lenovo in 2012) in 3.5-inch HDDs, and GS-Magicstor (RioSpring) founded in 2001 and concentrated on 0.8-inch and 1-inch HDDs.

It will be quite impossible for Guizhou HDD Technology to succeed as the global HDD market is shrinking and all the three others makers (Seagate, Toshiba and WDC) own all the patents on the technology.

Starting from nothing, the start-up will be obliged to send billion of dollars to acquire IPs, build an new R&D team to design drives and being obliged to hire technical executives from competitors, and finish the construction of expensive clean rooms to assemble the devices.

Another solution could have been to buy poor value Toshiba HDD business if the Chinese company wants really to enter into this market.