The team is already thinking of applications for metamaterials as read-heads for future generations of hard-disk drives or optical modulators for communications.
Evercore Partners analyst Kirk Materne this afternoon trimmed his EPS estimates for Microsoft for the next couple of quarters to reflect the current shortage of hard-disk drives that has resulted from the recent Thai floods, plus lower gross margin assumptions to reflect increased investment in services and online and a greater revenue contribution from the entertainment and devices segment.
FORBES: Microsoft: Evercore Trims Estimates For HDD Shortage
Goldman Sachs analyst James Covello this morning trimmed his EPS estimates for Intel to reflect the expected impact on the company from the restricted supply of hard disk-drives as a result of the severe flooding in Thailand.
FORBES: Intel: Goldman Trims Estimates On Impact Of Thai Floods
It is also a vital component of high-voltage wires, magnetic coatings for high-density hard disk drives, fiber optics, fiberglass, catalytic converters and spark plugs.
Currently, hard disk drives offer a more cost-efficient alternative to solid state drives, making them a more suitable option for developing and expanding cloud infrastructures, as capacity matters more than speed.
Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (Hitachi GST) develops advanced hard disk drives, enterprise-class solid state drives, and innovative external storage solutions and services used to store, preserve and manage the world's most valued data.
ENGADGET: Hitachi GST's G-Drive Slim: world's thinnest 2.5-inch external hard drive
Apple, for example, has also frustrated hard-disk drive makers by featuring solid state drives across its line of notebook computers and eliminating spinning disks in the MacBook Air, its thinnest, lightest model.
Solid-state storage and memory technologies in general use less power than hard disk drives when they are active, and thus there can be power savings if some solid-state storage and memory can be used in a mixed storage technology environment in a way that reduces the spinning time of hard disk drives and thus decreases the power needs of a storage system.
While flash memory in a separate smaller capacity SSD module is playing a role in these new ultra-thin computers the introduction of hybrid hard disk drives with a flash cache inside the hard drive may plan a significant role as well.
Turns out, a good chunk of it resulted from the price spike in the quarter for hard disk drives, which saw a sharp fall-off in supply as as a result of the recent severe flooding in Thailand.
Though not directly affected by the Thai flooding, the company cautioned that they could be affected by potential shortages of non-optical components used in customer systems, like hard disk drives.
FORBES: Finisar's Disappointing Outlook Sinks Optical Stocks
The Archos G9 Android-based tablet computers contain Momentus Thin (7 mm thick) hard disk drives from Seagate Technology rather than flash memory for long term storage.
Hard disk drives have shown their own improvements. 4 TB 3.5-inch HDDs are ramping into production by all the remaining HDD companies.
Disk-drive maker Western Digital said that production had resumed on its hard drives on November 30, after the facility was pumped dry of flood water, the power was restored and damaged inventories assessed.
It took Intel, for example, until last month to inform shareholders that its fourth-quarter results will not match its earlier outlook, due to a global shortage of hard disk drives related to the flooding.
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