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News Release from: Toshiba Europe Storage Device Division
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial
Team on 01 March 2007
Drives dominate in automotive storage
With sales exceeding five million units, Toshiba Europe Storage Device Division reckons it has secured 85% of the global market for automotive-grade hard disk drives.
With sales exceeding five million units, Toshiba Europe Storage Device Division reckons it has secured 85% of the global market for automotive-grade hard disk drives This industry milestone is testament to Toshiba's 10 years experience in the automotive HDD industry and the time and resources it has spent to ensure its technology can withstand the rugged and extreme operating environments of today's in-car applications
This article was originally published on Electronicstalk on 17 Oct 2002 at 8.00am (UK)
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With the car widely regarded as the next frontier for future generations of infotainment devices, manufacturers and aftermarket suppliers are turning to HDD technology to support other sophisticated in-car applications such as MP3 playback, digital video, gaming and 3D GPS mapping.
To date, 15 of the world's leading car equipment manufacturers have incorporated Toshiba HDDs into their car equipment products.
According to research firm IDC, the market for automotive HDDs is growing at record pace and estimates that the number of units sold to grow from 2.4 million in 2005 to 8.5 million in 2009.
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In addition, a recent report from TRG Update Service showed that nine new cars at the recent North American International Auto Show had HDD technology integrated into their dashboard electronics, with a further eight models to be launched throughout 2007.
For the 2008 model year, it is estimated that eight of the 36 announced models have hard disk drives included.
This is indicative of the widespread market adoption of HDD technology in markets such as Japan, where TRG estimates that 76 car models or 27% of the total are available with hard disk drives and the USA, where Jeep, Cadillac, Dodge and Mitsubishi are offering their first hard disk drive based models.
Across Europe, where 2% of cars currently offer hard disk drives, four of the major domestic brands will offer hard-drive-equipped cars within 18 month.
"Hard disk drives for in-car navigation systems require high reliability", commented Toshio Magome, Senior Director, TSR Research.
"Toshiba's effort to design reliable hard disk drives has received substantial credibility from many car navigation system builders around the world".
"Subsequently, Toshiba occupied about 85% of the market share for HDD for car navigation system in 2006".
"Hard disk drive technology offers tremendous benefits to both automotive manufacturers and after-sales suppliers due to its inherent ability to deliver a quality experience in a diverse range of operating environments", explained Martin Larsson, Vice President and General Manager, Toshiba Europe Storage Device Division.
"As a growing number of automotive manufacturers begin to integrate complex and feature rich multi-media in-car systems we expect demand for automotive grade hard drives to grow exponentially".
Toshiba continues to lead the market for small form factor mobile HDDs.
Throughout 2006, the company led worldwide shipments across all small form factor HDD formats with over 26% of all 2.5, 1.8, 1.0 and 0.85in HDDs sold sourced from Toshiba.
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