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- Hard Disks
Facing a relentless onslaught from tablets, smartphones and solid state drives (SSD), global hard disk drive (HDD) market revenue in 2013 will decline by about 12 percent this year, according to an IHS iSuppli Storage Space market brief from information and analytics provider IHS.
Revenue is set to drop to an estimated $32.7 billion in 2013, down 11.8 percent from $37.1 billion last year. HDD revenue will be flat the following year, amounting to $32.0 billion in 2014, as shown in the figure below.
“The HDD industry will face myriad challenges in 2013,” said Fang Zhang, analyst for storage systems at IHS. “Shipments for desktop PCs will slip this year, while notebook sales are under pressure as consumers continue to favor smartphones and tablets. The declining price of SSDs also will allow them to take away some share from conventional HDDs.”
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Lite-On Technology (hereinafter “Lite-On”) announced today that its Board of Directors approved to commence a cash tender offer to acquire the remaining outstanding shares of Lite-On IT Co., Ltd. (hereinafter “Lite-On IT”) through a 100%-owned subsidiary, Baoyuan Co., Ltd. (hereinafter “Baoyuan”), at NTD 32.75 per share, in sight of industry trends and integration of corporate resources. The cash tender offer will start from January 31st, 2013 and conclude on March 15th, 2013. The acquisition is conditioned upon the purchase of minimum tender of 81,542,619 shares (i.e. 8.89% of Lite-On IT outstanding shares) and the approvals from domestic and international regulatory parties.
After the completion of the tender offer, Baoyuan will issue redeemable preferred stock as consideration in exchange for the remaining Lite-On IT common shares. Subsequently, Lite-On will commence the merger with Baoyuan and directly own 100% stake of Lite-On IT.
Lite-On expects to continuously retain its leading position as the world's largest player of optical drives and penetrate SSD market in the Information and Communication Technology industry and strengthen its competitiveness via this acquisition. With the benefit of shared R&D and product know-how expertise, Lite-On will be capable of providing a full range of products to global clients of both companies and materialize the cross-selling opportunities. In addition, with synergies of cross-marketing, the rise of high growth markets in cloud computing, automotive electronics and medical & biotech applications will further bring revenue growth and profit expansion.
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- Network Storage
ASUSTOR Inc., a leading innovator and provider of network storage solutions, today announced the release of four new enterprise-level 1U and 2U rackmount NAS devices. These new devices consist of the four drive bay AS-604RS and AS-604RD models and the nine drive bay AS-609RS and AS-609RD models. All devices come equipped with the Intel Atom 2.13 GHz dual-core processor which combines supercharged performance with low power consumption. Furthermore, all devices are verified as VMware, Citrix and Hyper-V ready, providing businesses with a flexible and cost-efficient virtual storage solution.
“Our new rackmount NAS models include the type of hardware specifications required by the most demanding business environments such as dual gigabit Ethernet ports, eSATA and SuperSpeed USB 3.0 interfaces and support for hard drive hot swapping.” said Johnny Chen, Product Manager at ASUSTOR. “The AS-604RD and AS-609RD models also feature redundant power supplies meaning that should the primary power supply fail, a second one will automatically start running to keep the NAS powered on. This undoubtedly gives businesses the type of 24/7, round-the-clock, uninterrupted access that they need.”
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- Flash Memory
Singapore based Strontium Technology launched premium solid metal USB drives called Ammo. The new Ammo USB Flash Drive with a shiny metallic lustre is available in gold and silver colour finish. The gold finish drive is actually plated with real 24 carat gold giving it a rich appearance.
Ammo Flash drive comes in a sturdy brushed metal casing with a sleek look keeping in mind the demands and requirements of discerning users who want a high quality and high class product. The sleek and robust design works not only with Windows platform desktop PC, notebook PCs and Apple iMac and MacBook as well. The highest quality NAND flash memory component used in the Ammo USB drives offer maximum reliability and sustained fast data transfer rates.
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- Network Storage
QNAP Inc. introduced the new TS-x70U-RP series Turbo NAS to its US market this week. The new series, TS-x70U-RP, stands out with its economical 10GbE capability and retains all the same features.
The new TS-x70U-RP series NAS is powered by a high performance Dual-core Intel 2.4GHz CPU and is equipped with 4GB DDR3 RAM with upgradable option up to 16GB. The 10GbE ready capability makes the TS-x70U-RP series the perfect solution for business applications such as iSCSI IP-SAN, server virtualization, high speed backup, video storage, and centralized shared storage. “Timing is everything and we realize that this is the right time to introduce an affordable 10GbE solution for SMB’s, power users and virtualized environments to the NAS market,” said Ivan Hsu, Product Marketing Director for QNAP. “Compared to three years ago, the overall 10GbE ecosystem has gone through a big change and we feel that a complete 10GbE ready server, 10 GbE network card, and switch solution under $5,000 is the new trend. We want to revolutionize the game by making it more accessible to users hungry for more performance,” he added.
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- Duplicators
Aleratec today introduced the new 1:3 RoboRacer DVD/CD MultiDrive SA Duplicator, a fully-automatic disc duplicator featuring three DVD/CD disc-burning drives and a 150-disc capacity for rapid, hands-free completion of disc duplication projects. This new duplicator is completely standalone, so no computer is required.
The 1:3 RoboRacer DVD/CD MultiDrive SA is the next generation in Aleratec’s line of innovative robotic disc duplicators, and offers more speed and convenience than any RoboRacer Aleratec has ever made for large jobs.
Aleratec RoboRacer DVD/CD disc duplicators make high-quality disc copies automatically while users are free to attend to other business. The user simply loads the duplicator with a source disc or source image via the USB connection, and up to 150 blank discs. Simple, push-button controls start the duplication process and no further user intervention is required.
"The 1:3 RoboRacer DVD/CD MultiDrive SA Duplicator advances the successful RoboRacer series with enhancements that promise increased productivity without compromising high-quality results,” says Perry Solomon, Aleratec’s President and CEO. “Our customers will be able to complete their DVD and CD duplication jobs faster and with less interaction required than ever before.”
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- Hard Disks
HGST today announced the industry's highest-capacity 10,000 RPM, enterprise-class hard drive – the Ultrastar C10K1200. Providing a capacity extension to HGST's proven Ultrastar C10K900 product line, the new 2.5-inch Ultrastar C10K1200 features a SAS 6Gb/s interface for reliable data throughput, a 64MB cache buffer for optimized read/write response time, and a fast 10K rotational speed for reliable high-performance computing. All this, combined with the drive's low power, high capacity and high performance attributes, results in higher density servers, blades and network storage arrays that helps reduce space requirements, lowers cooling costs and improves total cost of ownership (TCO).
Increasing storage needs, shrinking floor space and budgets, and reducing power and cooling are just a few challenges that datacenter managers face today, making it challenging to scale and sustain business growth. Whether building datacenters for public clouds, private clouds or traditional datacenters, adopting the right tiered storage strategy delivers greater efficiencies in terms of reliability, performance, capacity and power, and can make a vast difference in the ability to lower TCO.
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- Flash Memory
MyDigitalSSD proudly introduces the BP4, the 4th generation of their critically acclaimed and award-winning Bullet Proof line of solid state drives.
BP4 SSDs feature SATA III 6Gb/s performance in 2.5” Slim 7mm and 50mm mSATA form factors to increase user productivity up to 70X. Backwards compatible with SATA II applications, the BP4 eliminatesthe bottle-neck found in stock hard drives; making them an ideal upgrade solution formany of today's Tablets, UltraBooks, Hybrids(HDD/mSATA Notebooks), and Desktop PCs.
Unlike their predecessors, BP4 drives have been over provisioned forimproved Random Read/Write performance and IOPS, extended performance endurance to reduce sluggishness as the drive fills with data, prolonged drive life, reliability, and low power consumption - all at the unequaled price to performance ratio synonymous with MyDigitalSSD Bullet Proof SSDs.
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- Flash Memory
Seagate Technology plc, a worldwide leader in storage solutions, and Virident Systems Inc., the performance leader in flash-based storage-class memory (SCM) solutions, today announced a strategic agreement to jointly deliver solutions for the growing enterprise flash storage market. Under the agreement, Seagate will immediately offer a complete line of flash-based PCIe solutions to its OEM and distribution partners. In addition, Seagate and Virident intend to leverage their mutual strengths to create next-generation hardware and software solutions for the solid-state storage market. In conjunction with the agreement, Seagate has made a strategic equity investment in Virident, and will appoint one member to the Virident Board of Directors.
“Seagate is thrilled to team with Virident, a technology leader in one of the fastest growing markets in enterprise and cloud computing,” said Gary Gentry, senior vice president and general manager, Solid State Drives at Seagate. “Together, we are working to develop the next-generation hardware and software solutions in the PCIe space. Our solid-state strategy is founded on both in-house development and through strategic partnerships with innovative companies to deliver the broadest portfolio in the industry. We believe that this strategic agreement immediately strengthens our leading position in the enterprise storage market by adding a broad line of Seagate flash-based PCIe solutions powered by Virident to our portfolio. We look forward to a long, productive partnership with Virident.”
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- Flash Memory
Intel Corporation announced today the Intel Solid-State Drive 525 Series (Intel SSD 525 Series) in a small mSATA form factor with 6-gigabit-per-second (Gb/s) performance. The Intel SSD 525 Series gives OEM customers, channel and tech enthusiasts an ultra-portable, low-power storage solution in one-eighth the space of a traditional 2.5-inch hard disk drive (HDD) to drive innovative Ultrabook, tablet and embedded applications.
The Intel SSD 525 is the latest entry to the Intel 500 Series SSD Family aimed at higher-performance, enthusiast solutions. Measuring 3.7mm x 50.8mm x 29.85mm and weighing 10 grams, the mSATA with PCI Express (PCIe) mini-connector delivers the performance of the company’s Intel SSD 520 Series client drive. This makes the Intel SSD 525 suitable for All-in-One desktops, notebooks, Ultrabooks and workstation upgrades, as well as automotive, digital signage, embedded video and retail solutions.
