Seagate thrust on consumer electronics market

By Our Corporate Reporter

CHENNAI, MARCH 13. Seagate Technology, a leading provider of Internet infrastructure storage solutions, is planning to enter the new generation consumer electronics goods markets in India initially through partnering Indian firms and later directly.

``Storage networking and new generation consumer electronic (CE) market was expanding beyond the traditional PC and server markets" Mr. Don Kennedy, Seagate's Vice President, Asia marketing operations told newsmen here today adding that the company was already in discussion with leading Indian consumer electronic goods majors for an earliest tieup.

He said hard disc drive technology of which Seagate had a definite global leadership was planning to tie up with leading Indian consumer electronics firms for production and marketing of the hard disc drives(HDD) integrated new generation consumer electronic goods.

The product portfolio under the proposed tieups include, personal video recorders and set top boxes to begin with adding that the company's consumer electronics testing and engineering centre at Colorado offers unique services and CE-optimised HDD technology to customers who are integrating disc drives into CE devices.

According to market research company, International Data Corporation, worldwide disc drive revenue for CE market is expected to reach $2.5 billion by 2003. ``We are beginning to see a progressive emergence of the CE market in India,'' said Mr. Kennedy.

Seagate claimed that it sold more hard drives for CE devices than all its competitors combined. It began working to develop the CE storage market in 1997. In April 2000, the company shipped more than two lakh disc drives for personal video recorder products.

In July 2000, Seagate unveiled its consumer electronics testing and engineering centre for helping consumer electronics companies integrate hard drives into new classes of consumer devices.

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