Internal roadmaps from Seagate reveal that the company plans to ship 14TB and 16TB hard disk drives over the next 18 months. By 2020 the company should also be able to ship a 20TB model, according to PC World who learned about the company's plans during an earnings call.
Currently Seagate is readying helium based 12TB HDDs. These are currently tested by Seagate's partners and the feedback is positive, according to Seagate's CEO Stephen Luczo.
Last December, Western Digital announced that 12TB and 14TB helium filled HDDs sold by under its HGST brand will become available this year.
Both Seagate and Western Digital target the enterprise market with the high capacity HDDs. Consumers more and more move from HDDs to SSDs, therefore HDD manufacturers more often release HDDs for the enterprise market where they serve as cheap mass storage.
However, also in the enterprise market SSDs become increasingly important, Seagate therefore already announced a 60TB SSD for enterprise usage which should also ship as early as this year.
