Western Digital has announced its entry into the miniature drive market. Starting in Q2 2005, Western Digital will offer 3600 RPM 1-inch hard drives with capacities up to 6GB. They will be offered with either a standard CF II interface or will be integrated directly into new products.
“The sub-2.5-inch markets, mostly driven by massive demand for MP3 players and, in the future, by multi-function mobile phones, will be the most explosive growth areas for hard drives,” said John Monroe, a research vice president at Gartner. “We are witnessing a global cultural revolution in portable digital entertainment. Hard-drive enabled MP3 players are already becoming ubiquitous, and by 2008, at least 8 percent of mobile phones could contain a hard drive.”
A small subsite has been set up but information is scarce right now. Presumably, as we get closer to release, more information will appear there.