At the Technology, Internet ensuring that WDC executes on the technology transition to 3D NAND and reducing the historical volatility in SanDisk’s gross margins. He said SanDisk was caught off guard with how quickly Samsung transitioned to 3D NAND but is now confident that SanDisk is on track with its 3D NAND transition.
Seagate CFO Dave Morton said his expectation was for roughly flat HDD industry revenue with the opportunity for some slight growth long-term, which is at odds with WDC’s view above.
There, declines in PCs (which make up around 30 per cent of total revenue) and Mission Critical disk drives (around eight per cent of revenue) will continue to be offset by growth opportunities in enterprise high-capacity/nearline, surveillance, and gaming markets.
Seagate continues to highlight a shift of total storage capacity shifting to the cloud. During the March quarter it saw slower demand for PC and mission critical drives, and was unable to fulfil its high-capacity drive demand. There was strong uptake of its 8TB drives and Morton sees a potential tailwind into the second half of 2016 driven by cloud demand.
There has been good progress in its development of Heat-Assisted Magnetic Recording (HAMR), with a potential 30 - 40 per cent increase in capacity. He believes the technology is ready to bring to market, though from a cost perspective it will likely not be released for one or two years, dependent on the demand for subsequent 12TB drives.
Some very interesting points made here. Who's prediction is more likely to be proven correct and who's prediction will be their Kodak moment. Strange how WD never made mention of HAMR. Just my observation.