With the rising popularity of netbooks, PC vendors are under pressure to reduce costs by all means possible. In response to these cost reductions, Seagate, Western Digital and Hitachi have begun to develop low-cost 2.5-inch hard disk drives. By minimizing the cost of drive ICs, magnetic platters, and pick-up heads, these new models are expected to be priced 40-50% less than existing entry-level 2.5-inch hard drives.
Seagate Technology, Western Digital and Hitachi Global Storage Technologies, in response to the calls for cost reductions from PC vendors, are developing low-cost 2.5-inch hard disk drives (HDDs) for use in netbooks and other low-cost PCs. The HDDs are targeted to be 40-50% less expensive than existing 2.5-inch entry-level HDD models. Availability could start as early as the second half of 2009, according to industry sources in Taiwan.
As the consensus among PC vendors is that low-cost PCs will dominate the global market in 2009, they are under pressure to reduce production costs by all means possible, the sources indicated. For netbooks, the cost of key components including CPUs, LCD panels, optical disc drives and batteries mostly fall between US$20 and US$25 each while a 2.5-inch HDD can cost as high as US$43-45, thus making them the target for cost reduction, the sources pointed out.