Research: Hard drive boom coming for in-car electronic devices (chart)
Five or six years from now, cars will commonly come with hard drives for storing music, video and other data, research firm iSuppli predicts.
Shipments of hard drives for in-car digital systems are expected to reach 16.6 million units by 2013, nearly five times the 3.5 million in 2006, iSuppli said in a report released today. The firm argues that in-car navigation systems typically use either discs or hard drives for the storage of maps and other data. CDs are losing ground to DVDs, but both could eventually lose out to hard drives.
The trend would be a boon for hard drive manufacturers such as Seagate Technology (STX) and Western Digital (WDC). There would also be the potential for flash memory players such as SanDisk (SNDK) and Micron Technology (MU) to break further into the in-car device market.
"In the very near future, vehicles will be required to receive and store broadcast digital content, from radio, television and other data-delivery systems such as WiMAX," said iSuppli analyst Richard Robinson. "This requirement is shaping the strategies that are being developed by vehicle manufacturers as they look for suitable replacements for current read-only optical technologies."
iSuppli predicts that despite consumer preferences shifting away from read-only optical technologies in favor of flash memory and hard-drive-based media, single-CD systems will remain the default audio playback technology in cars through 2013, with nearly 100 percent market penetration in the United States, Europe and Japan. The technology shift would have a effect on the in-car experience for large players such as Toyota (TM), Honda (HMC), General Motors (GM) and Daimlerchrysler AG (DCX).
Forecast chart, below:
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On the face of it, Greendragon appears to put forward sound comment on the above article, until you ask the question why don’t they use flash media in desktop and laptop PCs then? The answers are, price and capacity.
Firstly flash is just too darned expensive.
Secondly, 32gb of capacity may sound good but would you be happy with that amount of disc capacity on your PC? Similarly, in-car entertainment is not just about the driver listening to a few mp3s, it’s about keeping the kids quiet in the back with a high definition, wide-screen movie. The typical digitised movie uses about 700mb of disc space. Add a few of those to your mp3 collection and all your flash storage capacity is used up. Compare that with Seagates announcement of their one terabyte range of drives, one of which is optimised for multimedia usage http://www.podtech.net/home/3380/seagate-reaches-terabyte-milestone
Maybe it is Greendragon who needs a twenty first century reality check.
Ralph Goodson, London, England
I think the guy writing the article is wrong about the hard drives in cars. With flash memory growing in capacity they would more likely be used in cars for mp3 players and storage. There is already a super high capacity sd card w/ 32gb. It consumes less electricity and has no moving parts. It seems to me that business world is not inline with the technology sector. I had seen this coming a long time ago. The are stereo systems that use usb ports as well. Hard drives are obsolete for portable storage. Move into the 21st century. Enuff said
Honestly flash media is great but until they can make it as reliable as a hard drive I wouldnt go with flash media. If you leave a flash media card disconnected from a power supply of some sort you can lose your info. Granted this normally takes a long time. Also those little cards can get lost way too easily. If someone can give me the reliability of a HDD with no moving parts and with a large disc capacity I would be very happy but for now reliability wins me over.