Hard drive volumes to pick up after slow first quarter

Hard drive manufacturers expect a 4 to 5 per cent drop in shipments following a slow holiday season person for notebooks, said the DigiTimes.

However far from heralding a shift away from physical hard drives, hard drive manufacturers told the DigiTimes that the firms expected to see "double digit" growth in the second quarter.

The hard drive makers were pinning hopes on good sales of new model notebooks, likely the raft of recently launched Intel Sandy Bridge based devices. The manufacturers cited rises in raw material prices as putting gross margins under pressure.

Notebook hard drives make up 70 per cent of hard drive unit volume with a further 20 per cent in external storage and the remaining 10 percent going to the enterprise market.