Storage-driven future
Published on Oct 23, 2003
The widespread use of consumer electronics capable of storing digital data will be a key driver for the growth of the digital storage market over the next seven years, one computer hard disk manufacturer has predicted.
It is estimated that sales of storage devices ranging from hard and floppy disks to portable flash and thumb drives could reach 500 million units by 2010.
Brent Bargmann, vice president of operations for Seagate Technology (Thailand), said consumer electronics would provide a huge opportunity for the storage market and would take around 30 to 50 per cent of the total market in the next seven years.
"Storage will play a key role for the emerging digital world as it can help people store digital data and enjoy a digital lifestyle," he said.
It has been estimated that the production volume of storage products will reach 1 billion units during that seven-year timeframe.
Bargmann said that the entertainment industry would drive the use of storage devices as it was generating many terabytes of new content each week, all of which will be recorded in digital format.
He said that the volume of music purchased online and downloaded is expected to rise to more than 30 per cent of the total market in 2006, and that this would be a significant part of the expansion of storage demand in the market.
At the same time, he said the growing trend for MP3 players, as well as the emergence of what are called "portal media players", will require much more use of hard disk drives in the near future.
According to Bargmann, storage would be a key function of consumer electronics devices such as handheld computers, personal video recorders and digital video recorders, as well as game consoles.
"These devices are part of the digital home of tomorrow that will allow people to download, capture and store information. However, there is a tremendous amount of devices that don't yet have storage. . . these will be a huge market in the future," he said.
Besides entertainment, Bargmann said the automobile industry was a unique market that showed a huge potential for storage in different parts of a car, such as the car's communications system, onboard diagnostics and voice control systems, as well as entertainment, information and navigation systems.
Bargmann was making his comments at the recent Apec Investment Mart 2003 at the Impact Arena in Muang Thong Thani.
Pongpen Sutharoj
Suchalee Pongprasert
THE NATION
