Magic Momentus from Seagate

Hard drive maker returns to the market with a number of major contracts

Seagate's return to the notebook hard drive market has been bolstered by big contracts with leading tier-one and tier-two manufacturers.

Since announcing its return to the notebook sector in June after a five-year absence, the firm has signed deals with Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Acer, Fujitsu Siemens, Time, Medion, Legend and Vobis, among others.

The notebook hard drive market is growing more quickly than the PC or enterprise drive markets, according to IDC, and units are expected to top 50 million next year.

Seagate's Momentus drive has been touted as the first notebook drive to operate at speeds higher than 5,400rpm but consume the same battery power as traditional 4,200rpm notebook drives.

"With Momentus, Seagate has helped us meet the increasing performance demands of our notebook PC customers," said Alexander Funke, manager of key components purchasing at system builder Vobis.

"With its high spin speed and low battery consumption, Momentus unleashes new performance possibilities."

John Donovan, vice-president of research firm TrendFocus, said: "Seagate is off to an impressive start in the burgeoning notebook hard drive market.

"Its advanced manufacturing approach and solid technology allow it to make a solid product launch into the fastest growing portion of the high-volume hard drive market."

John Fitzgerald, general manager for components at Ingram Micro, said: "The timing of Seagate's return to the notebook sector has been perfect.

"For the past couple of months there has been a large constraint in the entry-level 20-30GB notebook drive area. Seagate has taken advantage of the shortage from other players and is filling the gap.

"We sell drives predominantly into the white box/system builder arena and mobile is a really big growth area. Builders have milked as much margin out of PCs as they can, so higher-margin notebooks are the next logical step."