The biggest computer-products makers added to their collective local work force for the second straight year, erasing some of the heavy job cuts marked during the economic downturn.
The 24 largest computer-products companies with operations here added 305 local jobs for a total of 6,519 employees as of April, 5% more than a year earlier, according to this week’s Business Journal list.
Hiring was bolstered by the spread of mobile devices and cloud computing, as well as increased storage demands prompted by the proliferation of streamed video and data. The computer-products industry had shed about 2,000 jobs locally between March 2006 and March 2010, as corporate customers cut back on technology spending.
Seven companies on the list added employees, six cut jobs and seven had roughly the same size work forces as a year earlier. Four rankings were based on Business Journal estimates.
A diverse range of companies comprise the list, from disk-drive and memory products makers to accessory and networking companies. The list featured few shake-ups, with 15 companies maintaining the same slot as in the previous year, including the top six companies and the bottom four.
No. 1 Western Digital Corp. added 200 employees for a total of 1,600, up 14% from a year earlier. The Irvine-based company closed its acquisition of Hitachi Global Storage Technologies Inc. for $4.8 billion last month, positioning the company to battle for the top position among drive makers.
Its priciest acquisition to date took a year to finalize as antitrust concerns from U.S. and international regulators threatened to derail the acquisition.
Mark Moskowitz, an analyst in the San Francisco office of New York-based bank JPMorgan Chase & Co., told the Business Journal the buy provides entree to the growing corporate server and storage market, “where spending is a little more resilient.”
The past six months have been challenging for Western Digital, which saw Cupertino rival Seagate Technology LLC overtake it in overall disk drive sales, ending a two-year run of the market share lead. But it now appears Western Digital has overcome the challenges of dealing with the widespread effects of a natural disaster that crippled production in Thailand and tough negotiations.
Chief Executive John Coyne has said the company’s Thailand operation will be running at full capacity by September after being shut down in October, following the worst floods in the region in decades.
No. 2 Kingston Technology Co. saw employment remain flat at 825 people. The Fountain Valley-based company is the top memory products maker for computers and consumer electronics.
Kingston saw an industrywide sales slump in 2011 amid cooling demand in the market for third-party DRAM—Kingston’s specialty in that segment—which have led to price cuts on products such as USB drives and memory sticks.
No. 4 QLogic Corp. in Alisa Viejo added 42 employees to 499 people in a 9% increase from a year ago. QLogic is the market leader in fibre-channel adapters, which connect storage equipment to servers.
It is among a burgeoning group of networking-equipment makers—including No. 6 Costa Mesa-based Emulex Corp.—competing in a lucrative segment related to 10-gigabit Ethernet connection for data centers.
“It’s an important part of our strategy,” spokesperson Chris Humphrey told the Business Journal in an earlier interview.
Santa Ana-based STEC Inc. moved up three spots to No. 7 after adding 100 employees. That represented a 50% jump from a year earlier in the highest percentage increase of any company on the list.
Smaller solid-state drive makers are gaining corporate business as information technology spending returns. Solid state drives, which use spinning disk instead of chips, are increasingly being used for high-end corporate data storage as they’re more reliable and cost less to run.
Companies are projected to spend $4.5 billion on the technology in 2015, up from nearly $1 billion in 2010, according to Stamford, Conn.-based market researcher Gartner Inc.
Download the 2012 OC’s LARGEST COMPUTER-PRODUCT MAKERS list (pdf)
