Lake Forest-based Western Digital Corp.’s share of the disk drive market grew to about 20% in the third quarter amid overall growth in the sector, according to data collected by El Segundo-based iSuppli Corp.
A year earlier, Western Digital had 19.5% of the market.
The gain keeps Western Digital solidly in the No. 2 position, behind Scotts Valley-based Seagate Technology.
“WDC is playing in all the right markets right now,” iSuppli senior analyst Krishna Chander said. “I see relatively steady growth.”
Western Digital has been moving into higher end, faster drives,10,000 revolutions per minute. There’s room for growth with few competitors, Chander said.
“It’s a lucrative market: high profitability, low volume and guaranteed customers if your product is good,” he said. “A year from now, I can see,if everything else is normal,there’d be an uptick in market share.”
Overall, sales of drives are continuing to grow. When final data is collected, Chander estimates drive makers will have shipped 434 million drives in 2006. He forecasts 510 million drives for 2007.
In the third-quarter report, Hitachi Ltd, Samsung Corp. and Toshiba Corp. followed Seagate and Western Digital in the drive market. Much of the sector’s growth came from 3.5-inch drives for digital video recorders, where Seagate dominates at 44.2%. Western Digital’s share was 32.5%.
Chander said he estimates double-digit growth in drives used in desktop computers, Western Digital’s mainstay. He said he also sees Western Digital jumping into the market for 1.8-inch drives, which are used in digital music players and handheld computers.
Western Digital’s speedy Raptor drive for businesses has garnered attention, Chander said.
“They’re enjoying the monopoly, and I think it will show modest growth,” he said.
One investment bank doesn’t see much more room for Western Digital’s shares to grow on Wall Street.
A Deutsche Bank analyst recently downgraded the stock to “hold,” saying she doesn’t see anything on the six-month horizon to lift the stock.
Shares of Western Digital have climbed 15% in the past four months, giving the company a market value of about $4.7 billion.
The company is due to release results for the quarter ended Dec. 29 on Thursday.
Nano Funding
San Clemente-based RF Nano Corp., which is working to commercialize technology developed at the University of California, Irvine, raised $1.5 million in funding. The company designs chips to process microwave signals.
The money came from Laguna Beach-based Okapi Venture Capital LLC, a venture startup backed by Dwight Decker, chief executive of Newport Beach chipmaker Conexant Systems Inc., Western Digital and others.
The funding is the first for Okapi since it raised $30 million from investors last year.
More From CES
When you want to improve surfing, naturally you look to Orange County. That’s what Fremont-based CyberLink Corp. did, tapping Lake Forest-based chip designer Newport Media Inc. to up the speed of channel surfing on handheld TVs.
Newport’s digital TV receiver chip is used with CyberLink’s Mobile DTV to allow TV channels to be switched in one to two seconds. The partnership and product were unveiled at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas earlier this month.
Speaking of CES, there were a few other observations spotted on the convention center floor.
– Scottsdale-based Tas-er International Inc. launched its stun gun series for the masses. Billed as a non-lethal weapon,though the company has been under fire for that claim,the gun shoots darts that connect to a trigger by wires. Assuming you’ve hit your target, he or she will be incapacitated by 50,000 volts of electricity once you pull the trigger.
All that’s required to activate the Taser is a 60-second electronic background check. The stun guns come in fashion colors so your Taser coordinates with your Razr phone.
– Steve Jobs stole some of the thunder from CES this year, introducing Apple Inc.’s iPhone a few hundred miles away in San Francisco. Indeed iPod and its rivals,and all the accoutrement,were conversation fodder throughout the convention center.
– Fremont-based Atech Flash Technology Inc. is taking personal music one step further. At CES it launched the iCarta. It’s an iPod dock melded with a toilet paper holder so you can listen to “Taking Care of Business” while, well, taking care of business.
Internet Push
Anaheim-based NextPhase Wireless Inc., which provides phone and Internet service, is looking to grow its high-speed Internet access subsidiary, SpeedFactory.
The rollout is set to begin in California and near SpeedFactory’s headquarters in Atlanta this quarter. By spring, NextPhase hopes to expand to other West Coast markets and to the rest of the country in the latter part of the year.
