Struggling disk drive manufacture Western Digital Corp has gone to IBM Corp for its giant magnetoresitive head technology, for use in its future hard disk drives. IBM will supply components and information for the new drives, expected to reach the market by the first half of next year. Financial terms were not disclosed. IBM began targeting OEMs for its magnetoresistive head technology two years ago, and back in February was claiming to have shipped over 10 million heads, 9 million during the last five months. At the end of last year IBM unveiled its own first GMR products, billing them as the world’s highest capacity desktop PC disk drives (CI No 3,287). Toshiba Corp also has GMR disks on the market. Merrill Lynch & Co believes that IBM’s pin- size GMR giant magnetoresistive head technology is some 18 months ahead of the competition. Western Digital has been criticized for its slow move to magneto-resistive technology, but claims to be on track to have 80% of its business on MR for the next quarter, and over 90% by September.
