Digital Content Explosion Creates Huge Growth in Demand for Storage;
Seagate Now Shipping 111,600 Terabytes Each Day - Over One Terabyte of
Storage Every Second
SCOTTS VALLEY, Calif., April 22 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Seagate
Technology (NYSE: STX) announced today that it is the first hard drive
manufacturer worldwide to have shipped 1 billion hard drives -- a number
not only staggering in size but also emblematic of the massive amount of
digital content being created in the home, hand, office, car and dozens of
other markets. Consider this: the 1 billion hard drives Seagate has
delivered equates to approximately 79 million terabytes, able to store 158
billion hours of digital video or 1.2 trillion hours of your favorite music
-- and Seagate hard drives and storage solutions enable people to create,
share, enjoy and protect more digital content every day.
As further testimony to its market leadership and the central role
storage solutions play in the digital world today, Seagate projects that
although it took 29 years to reach the 1 billion milestone, the company
will ship its next billion in less than five years. Also, by the time its
nearest competitor reaches 1 billion drives shipped, Seagate will already
be close to shipping its second billion.
Seagate's billionth drive milestone comes as hard drive shipments
continue to increase dramatically. According to Gartner Group, last year
alone more than 500 million drives were shipped, compared to 1990, when
slightly less than 30 million were shipped.
In 1979, Seagate's first product, the ST506 hard drive, could store 5
megabytes of data or the equivalent of one MP3 song. The drive weighed
about five pounds and cost $1,500, or $300 per megabyte. Today, a typical
Seagate hard drive offers a terabyte of data (or 1 million megabytes),
which has enough capacity to record 32 days of high-definition video around
the clock -- at a cost of 1/5000th of a cent ($0.00022) per megabyte.
"This company has an amazing, colorful and important history, which
continues to be written every day by our 55,000 employees around the
world," said Bill Watkins, Seagate CEO. "Al Shugart and a few others
started the company behind a convenience store in 1979 and enabled the
birth of the first PCs. Today we're at the center of the digital content
revolution. So reaching this milestone is a great opportunity for us to
reflect on our accomplishments and those of our predecessors, and to also
look forward to the great things we can still achieve as a company."
Long-time Seagate customer, HP, congratulated the company on this
achievement. "Reaching this milestone could only be possible through
exceptionally strong leadership, committed employees and deep corporate
values that focus on innovation, collaboration and delivering superior
customer service," said Ike Harris, VP of notebook supply chain at HP.
"These values are very consistent with HP's and this alignment reflects the
strength of our partnership."
The rapid growth of digital content continues to come from a wide range
of sources. For example, analysts estimate that there are over one billion
digital still and phone cameras in the world and that those devices
accounted for 250 billion created images in 2006. It is predicted that
user-generated content sites (like Flickr and YouTube) will produce 65
billion downloads/views by 2010.
"Digital content proliferation is a long-term phenomenon," according to
John Rydning, IDC's Research Director for hard drives. "This phenomenon is
pushing demand for hard drives to more than 600 million units per year by
2010 and will continue to fuel hard drive demand in the decade ahead."
For more information on this important milestone, please go to the
website: http://1b.seagatestorage.com
About Seagate
Seagate is the worldwide leader in the design, manufacture and
marketing of hard disc drives and storage solutions, providing products for
a wide-range of applications, including Enterprise, Desktop, Mobile
Computing, Consumer Electronics and Branded Solutions. Seagate's business
model leverages technology leadership and world-class manufacturing to
deliver industry-leading innovation and quality to its global customers,
with the goal of being the time-to-market leader in all markets in which it
participates. The company is committed to providing award-winning products,
customer support and reliability to meet the world's growing demand for
information storage. Seagate can be found around the globe and at
http://www.seagate.com.
Seagate, Seagate Technology and the Wave logo are registered trademarks
of Seagate LLC. When referring to hard drive capacity, one gigabyte, or GB,
equals one billion bytes and one terabyte, or TB, equals one trillion
bytes. Your computer's operating system may use a different standard of
measurement and report a lower capacity. In addition, some of the listed
capacity is used for formatting and other functions, and thus will not be
available for data storage. Quantitative usage examples for various
applications are for illustrative purposes. Actual quantities will vary
based on various factors, including file size, file format, features and
application software. Seagate reserves the right to change, without notice,
product offerings or specifications.
This news release contains certain forward-looking statements, which
are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties. The ultimate
correctness of these forward-looking statements is dependent upon a number
of known and unknown risks and events, and is subject to various
uncertainties and other factors that may cause our actual results,
performance or achievements to be different from any future results,
performance or achievements expressed or implied by these statements. For a
list and description of various risks, relevant factors and uncertainties
that could cause future results or events to differ materially from those
expressed or implied in our forward-looking statements, see our Annual
Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended June 29, 2007, any subsequent
Reports on Form 10-Q and Form 8-K and our other securities filings.
SOURCE Seagate Technology
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Related links:
http://www.seagate.com
CONTACT:
Michael Hall, +1-831-439-2731,
michael.l.hall@seagate.com, or David Szabados, +1-831-439-2859,
david.szabados@seagate.com, both of Seagate Technology
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