Against the background of the artificial intelligence boom, hard drives and memory chips have also become very popular products, so Japan’s Toshiba will double its production next year. Approximately $380 million will be used to meet these needs.
Image source: Toshiba
How nostalgic Nikkei Asian ReviewToshiba is still the third largest hard disk manufacturer in the world, but it is obviously inferior to Seagate Technology and Western Digital of the United States, accounting for only a little more than 10% of the global market in terms of capacity. At the same time, the Japanese manufacturer has set itself the goal of increasing this share to 30% in the foreseeable future and is therefore investing money to expand production capacity.
The above-mentioned US$380 million in funds will be used in Japan’s next fiscal year starting on April 1, 2027, to expand Toshiba’s production lines in the Philippines. The project will be the company’s first such investment in the past five years. In addition to introducing additional production lines, it will also master the production of hard drives with a 40% increase in capacity, which will also help meet demand.
By 2030, Toshiba expects to launch production of 65TB hard drives and then master production of 100TB models. In the Philippines, the company expects to increase the automation of its production processes, which will reduce the need for additional personnel by 40% and increase the output of suitable products.
IDC estimates that the amount of data generated by information systems will quadruple to 718 ZB (one billion terabytes) between 2024 and 2030, with up to 60% of the data continuing to be stored on hard drives. Demand for such drives is unlikely to decrease in the foreseeable future. Seagate said as early as January that it had sold out its entire server hard drive quota for this year, and by the middle of this year it admitted that customers had retained production plans through 2028.
Western Digital will also invest in improving hard drives. It will invest $1 billion in Japan alone by the end of the century to develop new technologies and attract local scientific talent to its activities. The country is home to hard drive component suppliers that stand to benefit from Toshiba’s expansion plans.
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