Hitachi GST Continues to Be Profitable in 1Q08

Here are the revenue and shipments of hard disk drives by Hitachi GST, the subsidiary of Hitachi Ltd., during the first and second semesters of calendar year 2007, as well as for the first quarter of 2008.

HGST is finally profitable since the 4Q07, but the amount of operating income is rather small, and the manufacturer saw only a 4% growth of total units shipped from 1Q07 to 1Q08. Per comparison, between the same periods, Seagate grew 8% and WD 41% in volume shipments.

HGST has stopped the manufacturing of 1- and 1.8-inch HDDs focusing only on notebook, desktop and enterprise devices.

	1Q07	1H07	2H07	CY07	1Q08
Revenues in $ millions	1,264	2,479	3,084	5,563	1,415
Growth from previous year	*13%*	14%	12%	14%	*12%*
Operating income	(150)	(323)	42	(281)	65
Shipments in thousands
1.8/2.5	10,100	20,300	26,000	46,300	10,500
Growth from previous year	*21%*	26%	21%	23%	4%
3.5 desktop	7,900	16,500	21,000	37,500	9,000
Growth from previous year	*54%*	53%	32%	41%	*14%*
Enterprise	1,200	2,300	2,400	4,700	1,400
Growth from previous year	*30%*	19%	10%	14%	*19%*
1.0/Automotive/Emerging	330	670	330	1,000	180
Growth from previous year	*-8%*	-17%	-59%	-38%	*-44%*
Total Units	19,500	39,700	49,700	89,500	21,100
Growth from previous year	*33%*	34%	21%	23%	4%

(Source: Hitachi Ltd.)