Hard drive shipments grow rapidly despite recession

This article is part of our ongoing series of topics and discussions related to IT and storage technology. With the overall economy in recession and prices for even the highest-end hard drives plummeting, it would seem likely that the hard drive industry would be in dire financial straits. A new report from industry analysis firm iSuppli, however, indicates that few things are further from the truth. Hard drive firms are shipping a record number of drives with an average size larger than ever before and are making money hand over fist. The new data has some interesting implications for the industry and for storage at large. In the first quarter of 2008, iSuppli says hard drive firms sold 137 million individual drives in a variety of form factors for use in laptop and desktop computers, consumer electronics, external hard... [read full story]