Seagate and Toshiba are battling for control of magnetic head maker TDK, while WD watches for now.
What if the three remaining hard disk manufacturers became two? Seagate Technology and Western Digital control 90% of the market, according to market researcher TrendForce, with Toshiba picking up the crumbs.
Seagate and WD both make their own magnetic drive heads, but Toshiba relies on a third party, TDK, which also sells to Seagate and WD when they need extra capacity.
Seeking to guarantee supplies of this critical component, Toshiba made a bid for TDK’s drive head business earlier this year, according to Bloomberg. Concerned that this could affect its ability to meet the growing demand for hard disks from AI data centers, Seagate made a counteroffer, Bloomberg reported. TDK is staying mum.
If Seagate were to capture the TDK unit it could knock Toshiba out of the hard disk market altogether, according to Bloomberg.
While Toshiba is reliant on its suppliers for technological advances, WD and Seagate continue to innovate. In February, Western Digital announced two technologies aimed at speeding up drive throughput: high bandwidth drive technology (HBDT) and dual pivot technology (DPT).
Western Digital said HBDT will enable simultaneous reading and writing from multiple heads on multiple tracks, delivering up twice the bandwidth of conventional HDDs.
In July, Seagate launched a hard disk packing 30TB into a 3.5-inch enclosure using its Heat-Assisted Magnetic Recording (HAMR) technology, and announced plans to release 32TB and 36TB models.
