Hard drive market: Diversified brands, large capacity

In an era where flash memory cards are using on the market as a result of the convenience, increasing capacity, lower and lower prices of hard drives (HDD), products this year The world celebrates its 50th anniversary, still has a strong foothold.

The hard drive is still important because users still need storage devices with a large capacity that flash memory cards cannot. In Vietnam, as computers increasingly play the role of entertainment devices as well as personal data storage, hard drives become more and more important to users. Compared to about 3 years ago, the hard drive market in Vietnam has had many changes.

The "star" is rising

Apart from Seagate (the official distributor of GCC) in the past 1 year, the market of desktop hard drives in Vietnam has begun to miss the "hero" for Maxtor, while Western Digital (by RNET is distributors) despite being on the market for a long time but have never really become a "strong brand" in Vietnam now moving and gaining much attention from consumers. Meanwhile, the two stars who have just entered Vietnam have quickly become a big counterpart to Seagete, Samsung (distributed by FPT) and Hitachi (distributed by AceCom Technologies).

The strongest impression in the past is Samsung's hard drive. Although only officially available in Vietnam market at the end of 2003, but now hard drives of Samsung have appeared in most retail stores of large and small parts with many different models. According to a Samsung Vina official, the sales of hard drive products in 2005 increased 5 times compared to 2004. According to many owners of big computer parts stores in Ho Chi Minh City, Samsung hard drives may be holding positions. Monday (after Seagate) about the number of products sold in the retail market in Vietnam.

Meanwhile, Hitachi is known by the domestic market as a leading manufacturer of laptop hard drives and this is Hitachi's paving product. This is one of the hard drive brands that entered the Vietnamese market at the latest with Hitachi Global Storage Technologies announcing the expansion of the market share of hard drives for desktops, servers, laptops and devices. At the end of 2005. At the same time, AceCom Technologies, the official distributor of Hitachi's hard drive in Singapore, appointed Hitachi distribution system of hard drive products in Vietnam including Ach Chu, Gia Bao. AB, Hop Tam and Thinh Long in the South and Asian Essence Company in the North. Like Samsung, Hitachi's hard drive is flooding the Vietnamese market with many different models.

It should also be noted that, due to the fierce competition in the hard drive market, the price of similar products of different brands has not been much different. For example, Samsung SATA2 80GB hard drive (ATA / 300, 7,200rpm) is currently priced at 52 USD; Western Digital SATA2 80GB (ATA / 300, 7,200rpm) costs 50 USD; Seagate SATA2 (ATA / 300, 7,200rpm) costs $ 51.5.

80 is replacing 40

If in 2004, the 40GB hard disk drives were discarded by the 20GB senior, then in 2006 in Vietnam market, 80GB HDD was threatening the survival of 40GB; the "throne" is faster than the 3-year average life of the hard drive. One of the main reasons for accelerating this replacement is that the price of 40GB and 40GB hard drives is not much different. For example, the Samsung Plus 40GB hard drive (ATA / 100, 7200rpm) is currently priced at $ 46 while the Samsung Plus 80GB (ATA / 100, 7200rpm) costs only $ 48.5. Another reason, due to the increasing living standard, the technology of entertainment is growing, so the demand for storage also increases, so the users want to own the larger capacity hard drive products. Not only 80GB, on the market today there are many types of hard drives with capacities up to 500GB for desktop and 120GB for laptops.

In 2006, the Vietnamese computer components market also witnessed the end of the 5200rpm desktop hard drive (rpm), instead of the 7200rpm product. For laptops, the popular HDD is still 5200rpm. SATA2 technology is also gradually taking over, replacing traditional ATA discs because of the small SATA2, which allows faster mounting and faster bandwidth (300MB / sec) compared to the ATA's 100MB / sec. Prices of traditional ATA hard drives compared to SATA2 are also not significantly different, even equal. For example, the Seagate Baracuda 40GB hard drive (ATA / 100, 7200rpm) is currently priced at $ 47.5, while the 40GB Seagate SATA2 drive (ATA / 300, 7,200rpm) is similarly priced. This also gives us another guess that SATA2 is "seeing off" traditional ATA out of Vietnam's IT market.

Price and warranty

Hard drive products are a very good and clear proof for the judgment that we have heard for a long time that the power of IT products is increasing while the price is falling. If in January 2006 the price of 300GB Seagate SATA2 hard drive (ATA / 300, 7,200rpm) was 2.7 million VND, then in the next 6 months, the price was only 1.8 million VND, decreased nearly 1 million VND / product; meanwhile, for about 3 million VND you can now buy 400GB Seagate SATA2 hard drive (ATA / 300, 7,200rpm). Through monitoring on the market, we found that the larger the hard drive products, the more new technology, the more and more the price will decrease. Meanwhile, products with small capacity are reduced from 1-3 USD / month.

Because of the increasingly important nature of the data stored on the computer that the user when buying the hard drive is always concerned about warranty issues. Most of the hard drive brands available in the market do not have an official representative in Vietnam (except for Samsung Vina). Most repairs, warranties, after-sales support are authorized by vendors to distributors in Vietnam. Experience also shows that in Vietnam market, for many years, distributors of hard drive products have been constantly changing or changing their names . so when buying products, you should pay attention to and ask carefully this issue.

Most of the hard drives sold in the market are announced by the shops with a warranty period of 12 months. However, according to Samsung Vina, if Samsung's hard drive fails, Samsung will exchange new drives for customers within 1 hour, this policy is applied for 3 years with a desktop hard drive and 1 year. with hard drive for laptop. Meanwhile, manufacturers publish warranty periods that are different from the retail market. Time can range from 1-5 years depending on capacity and manufacturer, for example, 20GB type with only 1 year warranty; same 40GB capacity but Seagate brand 5 year warranty, and Hitachi, Toshiba, Samsung only 3 years warranty.

Kien Thuy