All of the world’s top 10 PC makers choose Seagate personal storage disc drives – which include the most popular drive in history, the U Series – and 10 leading Consumer Electronics device makers have qualified these drives for use in Personal Video Recorders, audio jukeboxes, satellite TV receivers and game consoles to be released in 2001. Propelling its lead in Enterprise storage, the company has a significant time-to-market advantage with 15,000-rpm drives, and has shipped over 13 million 10,000-rpm drives. Every leading network and Internet storage system company uses Seagate disc drives.
Seagate has continued its desktop market leadership and remains the strongest storage company overall, said Mark Geenen, president of leading data storage market research firm TrendFocus. Seagate invests more in Research and Development than all other independent hard drive companies combined. In Fiscal Year 2000, Seagate increased its intellectual property portfolio 25 percent to 1,250 patents, more than the collected patents of all other independent drive makers. As a result, Seagate offers among the most advanced technology and the broadest product offering of all drive manufacturers. Seagate is shipping the world’s fastest disc drive at 15,000 rpm, the Cheetah X15; the highest capacity disc drive at 180 Gbytes, the Barracuda 180; and the fastest PC/Consumer disc drive, the Barracuda ATA III.
Seagate’s leadership in the Enterprise storage segment is substantial, said Dave Reinsel, senior research analyst at IDC. Seagate introduced the first 10,000-rpm disc drives in 1996 and has shipped five generations and over 13 million 10K Cheetah drives to date, three times its nearest competitor. Last June Seagate shipped the first 15,000 rpm hard drive, the Cheetah X15, and is still the only company shipping this technology. Over two million Cheetahs shipped last quarter alone, and for the year 2000 almost one of two enterprise drives shipped, 10,000 rpms or greater, had the Cheetah name.
