Storage company Seagate Technology Inc is eyeing the emerging information appliance market as a likely source of future revenues. Recent analyst reports claim that information appliances – wireless mobile data devices that link to the internet or a company’s intranet – could steadily erode the market share of PC-based client/sharer computing.
The company says that it is already working on the storage devices for information appliances, pointing to its work with Flash memory technology and developing smaller disk drives. Seagate says that it expects to launch ‘instant replay’ devices for set-top boxes, which will allow users to record and playback audio and visual data routed through the box, this year. The firm sees initiatives such as Sun Microsystems Inc’s Jini Java network spaces and Microsoft Corp’s Plug ‘n’ Play project as important drivers of demand for the new kinds of storage devices it is developing. Seagate spent $585m on R&D last year.
Seagate’s search for new markets has been made more imperative by the volatile nature of its disk drive business. The company is expecting the market value of the disk drive sector to grow from $27bn last year to around $40bn in 2002. However, this growth doesn’t match the kind of runaway figures that the market was once used to, so Seagate has undergone a year-long overhaul of its business processes and supply chain systems in order to allow it to compete more effectively. The firm claims to still be confident in the storage area network arena, maintaining that it originated fibre channel and is still the volume leader in the market place.
