Seagate 2011 Annual Report Download - page 8

Table of Contents
PART I
ITEM 1. BUSINESS
We are a leading provider of electronic data storage products. Our principal products are hard disk drives, commonly referred to as disk
drives, hard drives or HDDs. Hard disk drives are devices that store digitally encoded data on rapidly rotating disks with magnetic surfaces. Disk
drives continue to be the primary medium of mass data storage due to their performance attributes, high quality, cost effectiveness and energy
efficiencies.
We produce a broad range of electronic data storage products addressing enterprise applications, where our products are designed for
enterprise servers, mainframes and workstations; client compute applications, where our products are designed for desktop and notebook
computers; and client non-compute applications, where our products are designed for a wide variety of end user devices such as digital video
recorders (DVRs), gaming consoles, personal data backup systems, portable external storage systems and digital media systems. In addition to
manufacturing and selling disk drives, we provide data storage services for small- to medium-sized businesses, including online backup, data
protection and recovery solutions.
Industry Overview
Electronic Data Storage Industry
The electronic data storage industry is comprised of companies that manufacture components or subcomponents designed for electronic
data storage devices and companies that provide storage solutions through a variety of technologies such as disk drives and semiconductor-
based
storage technologies such as flash memory.
Demand for Electronic Data Storage
Technological advances in storage technology and a proliferation of content rich devices such as media tablets, DVRs, gaming consoles,
digital music players and digital cameras, are driving the broad, global proliferation and growth of digital content through the:
• creation and sharing of all types of digital content, such as high-resolution photos, high definition video and movies, and music
by consumers and electronic data by enterprises;
•
aggregation and distribution
of digital content through services and other offerings such as YouTube, Facebook, Netflix,
Pandora, iTunes, Hulu and LinkedIn;
•
network and video infrastructure
, including broadband, internet protocol television (IPTV), cable and satellite that has enabled
the access, hosting and distribution of such digital content;
• enjoyment and consumption of digital content through DVRs, handheld devices, tablets, smart phones and gaming consoles, as
well as in automobiles; and
•
protection
of digital content through storage on backup devices and storage services.
As a result of these factors, the nature and amount of content being created requires increasingly higher storage capacity in order to store,
manage, distribute, utilize and backup such content. This in turn has resulted in the rapid growth in demand for electronic data storage
applications and solutions which we believe will continue to grow with the increased demand for electronic data storage in developed countries
as well as in emerging economies.
We believe that demand for electronic data storage in the enterprise and traditional compute markets continues to grow as the proliferation
of digital content in the consumer space has resulted in additional
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