Seagate to Cease Production of 7200RPM 2.5″ HDDs

In a bit of surprise news, it seems that Seagate has plans to stop producing 2.5-inch 7200 RPM hard drives later this year. The company cited an ongoing shift in the mainstream market’s demands for other products, specifically SSDs, as one of the primary reasons for stopping production. Meanwhile, the company will still continue to offer 5400 RPM 2.5-inch HDDs, and not surprisingly, desktop 3.5-inch 7200 RPM drives remain safe.

Although 7200 RPM drives are a little bit faster than 5400 RPM drives, they are much slower than solid-state drives. Consequently, consumers who require higher-speed storage solutions choose SSDs and largely ignore mechanical storage in the same form-factor. SSD purchasers, though, pay a gigantic premium if they want both huge performance gains and good storage capacities.

Seagate will continue to produce and evolve its excellent solid-state hybrid drives, so the company still occupies a unique market niche defined by very good speed performance and relatively big capacities in the 2.5-inch form factor, and it no doubt has big plans for SSDs in the future.

Clearly, the 7200 RPM mobile mechanical HDD is a redundant product category according to Seagate, so will WD soon follow suit?