A World-wide Economy

At one time there were literally hundreds of companies involved in the hard drive industry, today there are just three manufacturers left. Recently the acquisition by Western Digital of Hitachi GST, Seagate of Samsung's hard drive division and Toshiba of Fujitsu’s has created three mega manufacturers.

As a result of this consolidation, two weather events halfway around the world, the Tsunami in Japan and the flooding in Thailand, caused the manufacture of hard drive to be severely curtailed. Prices of hard drives had been on a steady downward slope for many years but this year prices are going up. When will prices start to come back down? I don’t know for sure but my guess is after things get back to whatever the new “normal” is.

Of course, capacity and speed continue to improve dramatically. Moore’s Law gets totally blown away by what the hard drive industry has done. Let’s hope that the three remaining players keep this rapid innovation on track.