The hard drive manufacturers like Seagate and Western Digital could see their growth slow as the tablets take precedence over multimedia PCs, but these groups do not seem to have their final word.

Seagate external hard driveThe market share devoted to computers may suffer the launch of the Apple iPad and many multimedia tablet competitors, Hewlett-Packard at Research In Motion, all new appliances with flash memory instead of a hard disk. But all is not bleak for these manufacturers: unit sales expected to jump by nearly 17% this year, because users want to store shelves amounts of data that only hard drives can hold.

In addition, the HDD industry by developing more refined models and more compact, has become increasingly efficient in managing its inventories. Kaushik Roy, analyst at Wedbush Securities, said that the threat is real and the tablets that the market has started the past two months to integrate it in the courts of hard drive manufacturers.

“It seems that the phenomenon is not yet integrated in its entirety,” said he. “People have not yet realized the full extent or gravity of the situation.”

“It takes you to the idea that some people who have bought a laptop before will now choose a shelf.”

FLASH MEMORY, FASTER AND STRONGER

Last week, RIM announced its BlackBerry pad playbook, avatar the last date of a trend initiated in the spring by the iPad, which has already sold over three million copies worldwide. According to research firm iSuppli, sales of tablets should reach 15 million units this year and soar to over 48 million in 2011. Some 18% of deliveries of ‘netbooks’ (mini-laptops oriented internet) are threatened this year.

The advent of market shelves could cut $ 2 or 3 percent growth in global sales of hard drives in 2010, according to IDC. (more…)