Global shipments of hard-disk drives rose 15.5% last year, as suppliers managed to overcome price wars, component shortages, and competitive upheavals, a market research firm said.

The HDD industry shipped 434.2 million units, compared with 375.8 million units in 2005, iSuppli said. In the fourth quarter of 2006, suppliers shipped 119.7 million HDDs, a 15.8% increase from the same period in 2005.

Along with strong sales to established markets in computing and consumer electronics products, the industry benefited from increasing sales of external hard drives, a relatively new market. Shipments of external HDDs soared 37% in 2006 to 2.6 million units. Demand for the devices is driven by an increasing number of consumers storing and backing up large video and audio files downloaded from the Internet.

By: DocMemory
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