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Wikipedia has a great diagram showing the process of hard disk drive manufacturer consolidation that tells a lot: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Diagram_of_

Wikipedia has a great diagram showing the process of hard disk drive manufacturer consolidation that tells a lot: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Diagram_of_Hard_Disk_Drive_Manufacturer_Consolidation.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Diagram_of_Hard_Disk_Driv... Now it's a perfect oligopoly: Seagate, WD, and Toshiba, just like the stories from many other industries.

rasz 7y ago
Its a guaranteed 30% profit margin industry with very high patent moat. No incentives to change anything.
- noisem4ker 7y ago
  The article mentions thin margins and declining volume due to SSDs. I wonder where the truth lies. Anyway, I'd rather data-starve for a couple years and save up for a big SSD rather than feed those responsible for such consumer-hostile practices.
  - folmar 7y ago
    Not that SSD vendors are much better... see other comments in this post.
- chx 7y ago
  > Its a guaranteed 30% profit margin industry While I was surprised by that figure https://www.seagate.com/ca/en/news/news-archive/seagate-technology-reports-fiscal-fourth-quarter-2019-financial-results-pr/ https://www.seagate.com/ca/en/news/news-archive/seagate-tech... this corroborates, with margin figures indeed roughly 30%-ish.