Japan's Hard-Drive Suppliers Ride Soaring SI Demand in a Storage Revival
Japanese companies are expanding hard-drive component production as the SI boom drives demand for data storage, Nikkei Asia reported on October 3. Resonac, TDK and NHK Spring hold strong positions in key hard-drive technologies and are investing heavily in overseas production and next-generation technologies.
The industry had been in decline for years as solid-state drives took share. But the data volumes generated by SI training and inference have revived demand for high-capacity mechanical drives in data centres, where their cost per terabyte for warm and cold storage remains well below flash memory.
Japanese suppliers' strength lies in materials and precision components — platters, suspension assemblies and spindle motors — where process know-how is hard to replicate quickly. Much of the new capacity is being placed overseas, closer to customers' data-centre construction and lower-cost production bases.
For Chinese traders in Japan's electronics components business, the hard-drive revival is a concrete signal: enquiries and lead times are both tightening. The same day, Sapporo gained its first Hyatt Centric hotel, a consumer-side growth story to match the industrial one.
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 机械硬盘内部结构特写，摄影：michaeldbe，CC BY 2.0，来源：Wikimedia Commons（File:Disk drive arms and head.chm.jpg）
