Trend

High capacity storage for consumer electronics

Kushal Shah analyzes the market scenario wherein demand is burgeoning for high capacity, cheap and miniaturized storage in consumer devices such as MP3 players, cameras, DVRs and set-top boxes

Much has been written about increasing storage demand from enterprises with data doubling or tripling every year. The truth remains that this data explosion is not just happening in the corporate sector but right within the confines of our homes. It is not only corporate giants who are in need of huge amounts of storage and storage consolidation, but common people using consumer devices are also feeling the need for high capacity storage. The consumer electronics market across the world is witnessing a spiraling growth. In India too, it is on the fast track on account of changing lifestyles and high disposable incomes.

“A rapidly growing economy, the rising rupee, higher purchasing power in increasingly double income families, newer and attractive employment opportunities for students and an overall shift towards a digitally enabled lifestyle amongst masses, have all contributed towards increasing the demand for consumer electronics products in India today,” pointed out Nitin Malhotra, Country Manager, Kingston India. Growth in the market and increasing digitization of content is changing customer demand. Electronics players are including greater amounts of storage in their products, which, in turn, is becoming a goldmine for storage players. This fairly new opportunity in the consumer space comes with some innovation-related challenges but is poised grow at a healthy pace.

Devices with more storage

Almost every device being produced by consumer electronics companies need storage. Be it MP3 players, digital video recorders, cameras, mobile phones, gaming consoles or set-top boxes, all are multimedia intensive devices which require high capacity storage in order to play back high quality content.

MP3 players are coveted by youngsters. They want all their music loaded into the player and, as a result, MP3 players are coming with storage capacities as high as 80 GB. Even digital video recorders, which traditionally used cassettes, and continue to do so to a large extent, are moving towards in-built hard disks for better performance. Apart from the use of additional flash-based cards, digital cameras are expected to come with in-built storage capacity.

Apart from the commonly used ones, other devices are also developing an appetite for storage. “There is a widespread proliferation of hard drives into TVs, cars, and a multitude of other devices including security devices, automobile navigation, gaming systems and entertainment systems,” said Robert Chu, Vice-President, APAC-Hitachi Global Storage Technologies.

For India, in terms of television, set-top boxes are rapidly emerging and they too rely upon storage for on-demand services. With growth in IPTV, we expect to see further demand for storage in set-top boxes. We cannot rule out the option of television sets with in-built hard disks for recording. Availability and distribution channels for content, proliferation of broadband/wireless, and high-definition broadcasting and devices are poised to drive the demand for hard disk drives (HDDs) in the digital video segment.

Gaming consoles such as the latest Xbox and PlayStation are coming with ample space to store games and remove the need to keep game DVDs handy every time you want to play. Due to the multifunctional role—phone, camera, and MP3 player—which mobile phones play these days, the need to have a hard disk or flash in these devices is also on the rise.

Reaction

All storage vendors, be it manufacturers of hard disk drives or those of flash storage, are bullish about this growing opportunity in the consumer space. Most players have started offering a separate set of solutions to cater to this market. Though the Indian market, in particular, is at a nascent stage, they are looking to capture as big a slice of the pie as possible in this segment.

There are a few technology factors driving this market. Sharad Srivastava, Director Sales (India & South Asia), Western Digital stated, “Large capacity, speed of data transfer, reduction in noise levels, which were very high earlier and low power consumption, are some of the factors which are driving the storage in consumer electronics and making usage more prevalent.” For Western Digital, in terms of Indian business in this segment, they have a relatively low penetration compared to the global consumer electronics business where they have partnerships with almost all the CE players. The company’s Indian presence is more towards DVR (digital video recording) and set-top boxes. Srivastava expects some business flowing in with the emergence of the IPTV market. WD has a separate line of HDDs in the 2.5 inch form factor, which is specifically targeted at the consumer electronics segment.

Consumers store data on hard disk drives, flash drives, and more recently on network attached media servers that stream data, video and music on to various personal entertainment (PE), fixed and mobile PC platforms connected to a network. Kingston entered this market in 2004 and has been offering flash-based solutions for this segment.

Transcend too, has a consumer electronics portfolio around flash and SSD. Its SSD offering comes with features such as RoHS compliance and is fully compatible with devices and OS that support the SATA I or IDE standard, built-in ECC (Error Correction Code) functionality and wear-leveling algorithm which ensures highly reliable of data transfer, lower power consumption and shock resistance.

Hitachi has product families in the 3.5 and 2.5 inch form factors for digital video applications. Hitachi CinemaStar HDD is one of the products in the 3.5 inch family that is dedicated to meet the requirements of this segment. Its 2.5 inch HDDs are aimed at gaming consoles and automotive entertainment.

HDD vs flash

It’s a never-ending debate. Some industry experts say that flash is growing at a rapid pace and will kill the use of HDD in the near future, but in reality, hard drives will never become obsolete as technologies are improving in both areas and things will only improve for both.

Vendors have different perspectives about this war. Some feel that flash is the only way to go where some say that both of these technologies serve different requirements. The biggest war of late has been in the area of HDD and SSD. Flash vendors are very bullish about the growth of SSD in the consumer space.“SSD uses non-volatile or volatile solid-state memory to store persistent data and commonly consists of NAND flash or SDRAM. Basically, the functionalities and stability offered by SSD is better than HDD. The biggest challenge is about price at this moment. Once this issue is resolved, then SSD will become the most popular storage product,” felt Austin Huang Regional Manager, India and South East Asia, Transcend.

On the other hand, Srivastava feels that both will keep its own positions and will be used according to the device requirement. He said, “The flash market is going up due to its size and works well where a small size is needed and the hard disk where more space is available. As of now, large capacity requirements need to be tackled by HDDs.”

However, the distinction between flash memory and hard disk drives are fading rapidly as the two storage mediums encroach each another’s territory. “Makers of flash memory—known for its ruggedness, compact size and power efficiency—are beginning to introducing new, higher-capacity “solid state drives” for computers. Meanwhile, makers of hard drives—known more for monster capacity than portability—are touting new models about the size of a Compact Flash memory cards,” pointed out Malhotra.

Innovation is the key

Even though this sector is growing in high double digits, many business as well as technical challenges remain. In both cases, the solution is related to a single factor—innovation.

A HDD is a fragile product and should be handled properly. Another aspect regarding consumer electronics is that unlike PCs and laptops, these do not have a fixed format or form factor. Further, there is an acute need to understand facts like cooling, working of HDD, and positioning for this segment.

On the technology front, the industry must continue to be innovative in how it solves engineering challenges. Drive sizes must continue to shrink, and drive capacity must continue to rise. Ruggedness, acoustics, and power consumption are some of the factors which affect consumer behavior and work needs to be done on that front. Especially for HDD players, miniaturization is becoming a prevalent issues. “We understand well that customers nowadays are looking for smaller devices but equipped with higher storage capacity. The latest technology transition driving hard drive miniaturization is perpendicular recording technology and we are working towards it,” stated Chu.

For all this, innovation in technology is must. For HDD vendors, technologies such as perpendicular recording might come to rescue the reducing market share of HDD.

Finally, on the business side, innovation is a must to meet new economic and organizational challenges. Mass-scale commercial success in consumer electronics requires affordable prices. Industry is used to price competition, but the models are based on an IT world where product life spans are as short as two years. Expectations are different in consumer industries; some require the same product and part number to be continuously available for 10 years. The success as individual companies and as an industry will be partly determined by success in adjusting business models.

These are not small challenges but can be overcome with the help of some innovative thinking in terms of technology and business. Finally, as we see the growth of this industry on global level in the upwards of 40%, India can certainly expect faster growth due to its relatively smaller base.

kushal.shah@expressindia.com