Western Digital 2013 Annual Report Download - page 14

such as SAS, SATA and Parallel Advanced Technology Attachment (“PATA”). We also provide in the mobile comput-
ing market of smart phones and tablets with standalone WD software applications such as WD PhotosTM and WD
2GO®for iOS, Android and Windows Phone platforms.
Client: Desktop and Notebook PCs. Client compute solutions consist of hard drives and solid-state hybrid drives
for desktop and mobile PCs. Our client compute storage solutions include hard drives designed for use in desktop PCs
requiring high performance, reliability and capacity with various attributes such as low cost per GB, quiet acoustics,
low power consumption and protection against shocks. In addition, we provide hard drives designed for use in mobile
PCs and requiring high performance, reliability and capacity with various ranges of performance and attributes such as
low power consumption for extended battery life and cooler operation, quiet acoustics and protection against shocks.
Our newest hard drives for mobile PCs are low-profile to address the emerging thin and light UltrabookTM PC
and tablet markets, including ultra-slim 2.5-inch hard drives and solid-state hybrid drives. These drives offer 500 GB
of storage capacity and high performance-enabling solid-state hybrid drive technology, thereby allowing consumers
the ability to maximize storage capacity and volumetric efficiency, as well as performance and system responsiveness.
We also offer SATA hard drives specifically designed for home and small office network attached storage systems
and optimized for energy efficiency and reliability, as well as hard drives designed for advanced single-user computing
systems such as professional systems for video editing and CAD/CAM (computer-aided design/computer-aided manu-
facturing) applications and high-end desktop PC applications including gaming, which require high performance and
high reliability. Our hard drive client compute unit shipments were 162 million, 150 million and 151 million for
2013, 2012 and 2011, respectively.
Enterprise Storage Solutions. Enterprise storage products consist of hard drives and solid-state drives for perform-
ance enterprise and capacity enterprise markets. Our enterprise storage solutions include performance drives which are
optimized for performance applications. Within performance drives, we offer large form factor drives which provide
high capacity storage, primarily for data storage systems, and small form factor drives which provide a range of
capacity and performance levels primarily for use in enterprise servers, supporting high volume on-line transactions,
data analysis and other enterprise applications. Our enterprise storage solutions also include capacity drives which
provide enterprise class reliability at the lowest cost per GB and are primarily for use in data storage systems, in tiered
storage models and where data must be stored reliably for years. Lastly, our enterprise storage solutions include solid-
state solutions which feature fast read/write speeds in high capacities.
In fiscal 2013, our HGST subsidiary announced a new helium-filled hard drive platform, which is at the fore-
front of advanced technology for increasing capacity and significantly reducing total cost of ownership for enterprise
and cloud customers. This new platform allows HGST to design seven-platter drives in a standard 3.5-inch form fac-
tor that will deliver superior total cost of ownership at the data center level by allowing significant improvements in
capacity, power, cooling and storage density. Our hard drive enterprise unit shipments were 28 million, 16 million
and 10 million for 2013, 2012 and 2011, respectively.
Branded Product Solutions. Our branded product solutions consist of hard drives embedded into WD®-, HGST-
and G-Technology-branded external storage appliances with capacities ranging from 500 GB to 24 TB and using
interfaces such as USB 2.0, USB 3.0, external SATA, FireWireTM, ThunderboltTM and Ethernet network connections.
Within branded products, we offer hard drives which provide high quality, reliable storage for backup and capacity
expansion in both mobile and desktop form factors that are designed to keep digital content secure while providing
portable storage for desktops and notebooks. Certain branded product solutions include software that assists customers
with backup, remote access and management of digital content. Branded products also include our home entertain-
ment products and wireless home networking products.
We have recently expanded our solutions for SMBs, by offering complete network storage solutions designed to
meet the needs of SMBs by providing centralized storage, data protection and remote file access.
Lastly, our home entertainment solutions include media players which connect to a user’s television or home
theater system and play digital movies, music and photos from an integrated hard drive, network hard drives, any of
our WD®-branded external hard drives, other USB mass storage devices or content services accessed over the Internet.
Our branded product hard drive unit shipments were 25 million, 18 million and 25 million for 2013, 2012 and 2011,
respectively.
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