Seagate to expand into flash memory

Seagate, currently the world’s largest manufacturer of hard disk drives, has announced its intention to move into the flash memory drive market within the next year.

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Seagate’s chief executive, Bill Watkins (pictured) said that the company would enter the market for devices that store data on flash chips by the end of next year. He however said that the company would continue to rely on its core market of magnetic hard drives.

"We have solid-state drives on every road map that we have," said Watkins.

Seagate previously held a 40 per cent stake in memory rival manufacturer SanDisk – a company, which is now ironically worth about the same as it. Watkins cited the stake when he said that Seagate had always had an eye on the flash market.