Western Digital 1995 Annual Report Download - page 7

P     , home offices and small
businesses continued to dominate computer-industry sales over the past
year. These fast-growing segments propelled the computer industry to
record shipments of 52 million desktop and mobile units, and with them,
record shipments of hard drives. Once again, our market grew faster than
expected.
Western Digital shipped 10.2 million drives last year, 49 percent more
than in the preceding fiscal year. Industry analysts tell us our unit-shipment
growth in calendar year 1994 yielded a three-point increase in share of the
global hard drive market, the industry’s largest.
We benefited in fiscal 1995 from numerous industry awards, and
widespread market recognition and acceptance of our Caviar hard drives,
the industry’s best known brand. Of every ten drives we make, three are
marketed through resellers for system integration, storage capacity addi-
tions, and to meet the upgrade demand from the PC installed base.
The industry outlook is bright. International economies are growing stronger. While U.S.
consumer demand drove the growth last year, a strong consumer market is emerging in Europe
and Asia. As PC microprocessor technology continues its fast pace and new, capacity-hungry
software applications and operating systems such as Windows 95 enter the market, the demand
for bigger, better, faster storage systems will continue to be met by our world-class team.
The Personal Storage Group’s production capacity grew 50 percent over the past year, from
1.9 million units per quarter to 2.85 million. Additions and improvements now under way could
raise our capacity to four million units per quarter by the end of the current calendar year.
Component and material scarcities that plagued our industry during its recent rapid growth
were made known to us early because of Western Digital’s first-to-market, first-to-volume product
introduction techniques. As we saw shortages developing, we were able to make changes to
improve the availability of adequate supplies of most materials. In the case of disk media, we
changed manufacturing methods and added a line to increase capacity by one third. Two more
lines will be added this year. We now make about a third of our own media.
For the future, we will continue to focus aggressively on the quality and reliability that built
the Caviar drive line’s great reputation. We will continue our cost leadership under Western
Digital’s “virtual vertical integration” style of production management. We’ll continue to leverage
the Company’s electronic design expertise into every new product. And, we will continue our
effort to lead the fast growing retail market as consumers increasingly prefer our widely recog-
nized Caviar drives.
   Personal Storage Products  .
Kathryn A. Braun,
Ex ecutive Vice President, Personal Storage Group
Personal Storage Products
Kathryn A. Braun
Worldwide Desktop
(3.5-Inch) and Mobile
(2.5-Inch) Hard Drive
Market Forecast
(units in millions)
Source: IDC, August 1995