hebig.org/blog
Personal webnode of Haiko Hebig

IBM has decided to exit the hard drive market citing the market has become too competitive. Analysts have pressured IBM to sell its HD business, which is part of its OEM technology group. IBM pointed to the OEM group last week as a reason for its poor first-quarter performance. Intention is to sell 70% of the HD business to Hitachi and to have 30% ownership of the resulting venture. The new company name is unknown.

With the new company intendend to develop open data-storage systems to take aim at industry leader EMC Corp, one has to wonder if the this move has anything to do with the highly troubled Deskstar GXP series, trouble around which left hefty scars on the businesses shiny image. One might also wonder if the 2,5"/notebook HD business will be sold, too, as IBM has a large share of this market. Also, hopefully the new company will continue IBM's intensive R&D efforts on increasing HD storage.

Brian Hayes of American Scientist has written a nice little historical review of hard drive technology, from the first hard drive (nice pic) made by IBM in 1956 to what may be available in 10-15 years.