WD begins volume shipments of its WD Scorpio Blue 9.5 mm, 2.5-inch mobile hard drive with 1 TB capacity. Designed for mainstream notebook computers, the new WD Scorpio Blue 1 TB hard drive utilizes 500 GB-per-platter areal density and is now available in the highest capacity for 2.5-inch hard drives in the industry-standard 9.5 mm, two-platter (2-disk) form factor.
Talk cloud all you want but HDDs are still taking in the business. While the press reported Apple's philosphy is headed towards USB sticks and cloud, WD shows how the make money in HDDs.
Western Digital revenue for their Q4 (ended in June) totaled $2.4 billion and hard-drive unit shipments were 54 million. The quarterly results include expenses of $35 million associated with the acquisition of Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (Hitachi GST).
In the year-ago quarter, the company reported revenue of $2.38 billion, net income of $265 million, or $1.13 per share, and shipped 50 million hard drives.
For fiscal year 2011, the company posted revenue of $9.53 billion and net income of $726 million.
“In the June quarter, we were able to meet stronger than anticipated demand, especially from our OEM customers,” says John Coyne, president/CEO. “We believe the stronger demand was driven by increased use of sea freight in advance of the second half of the calendar year as well as supply continuity concerns in the aftermath of the Japan earthquake.
“In a challenging HDD market environment in fiscal 2011, the industry saw unit volume growth of 4% while WD achieved growth of 6%...
“We remain focused on completing our strategic acquisition of Hitachi GST...we now expect that the transaction will close in the fourth calendar quarter of 2011, and our integration planning activities continue on schedule.”
