Samsung Will Produce 4GB 0.85-inch Hard Drive

[Jonathon Watkins]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/pcworld/20050418/tc_pcworld/120478' target='_blank'>http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=sto..._pcworld/120478</a><br /><br /></div><i>"Samsung Electronics is planning to enter the competitive miniature hard-disk drive market later this year, an executive at its semiconductor unit said on Friday. The company's first product will have a storage capacity of 4 GB and . . . will be an 0.85-inch type and be available from the third quarter of this year. . . . Samsung expects the price of flash memory to drop by roughly half in each of the next two to three years and said similar price falls for miniature hard-disk drives will be difficult to achieve."</i><br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/_40996585_drive_hitachi203ap.jpg" /><br /><span><i>An unrelated picture of a tiny hard drive.</i></span><br /><br />Well, it looks like <a href="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=36561&amp;">Toshiba</a> has some competition in the market for tiny hard drives. There are already several phones that contain hard drives and who knows what the future has in store for PPCs? Still, the last paragraph of the Yahoo news story makes it clear that Samsung's main enemy may not be Toshiba's hard drives, but instead Flash memory. After all, if there is no significant cost difference between hard drives and Flash, why bother going with a medium which is more power hungy and prone to failure? Still, Samsung's entry to the market will mean more fabulously fun photos of tiny hard drives and that can only be a good thing for all of us. ;-)

[stevelam]

Did that just say flash memory prices dropping by a half... that would mean a 1gb sd card for 25 quid wow *shocked*. :lol:

[van_mierlo]

I already spotted a 4 gig hard drive in one of the upcomming pda's.....ssssst

[Jonathon Watkins]

Did that just say flash memory prices dropping by a half... that would mean a 1gb sd card for 25 quid wow *shocked*. :lol:

Yup, prices are dropping Very fast indeed. :D

[mlougee]

If PPCs had some drive-based storage, they'd be a great tool for in-the-field photo viewing (nice big screen, much larger than any camera's LCD) and photo storage (offload from flashcards, format the cards, then take more photos).

There are a number of gadgets that *sort of* do this now, but they might not have the ability to view pics (just storage), or might be pricey ($300-500) to just view/store photos... they're not full-fledged PDAs!

Photo manipulation and management apps exist for PPCs, so it's possible to do even more than simple view/store.

Let's hope drives enter the PPC world quickly.

[jlp]

An integrated HDD means $2-300 boost in price for PDAs, cellphones, etc.

I only see an interest for smaller MP3 players. Now imagine a player the size of a flash-based unit but with 4-8 times the capacity, that would be good.