Catastrophic flooding disrupted hard disk drive makers' Thailand production plants last fall, driving prices up and shipment numbers down. Seagate, however, still managed to ship 47 million hard drives - a relatively small drop-off of 8 percent from the previous quarter's 51 million.
That number makes Seagate the new global HDD shipment leader. Prior to the disaster, Seagate and rival Western Digital were neck and neck, with the latter slightly ahead.
Seagate released an earnings report (.pdf) for its fiscal second quarter on Tuesday, posting $3.2 billion in revenue and net income of $563 million. Despite the down shipment figures, those numbers are both huge improvements on the company's first quarter results, which saw $2.8 billion in revenue and $140 million in net income. According to CBS, the company's stock price grew 6 percent to $22.40 on the news.
Seagate said its official acquisition of Samsung's HDD production line last month should buoy the company's output in 2012.
Not all companies were so lucky. To say Western Digital was hit hard by the floods would be an understatement. The company's earnings report for last fall showed HDD shipment figures fell by around half to 28.5 million HDDs, down from 54 million. Before the floods, its Thailand factories produced more than 32 million HDDs.
Western Digital was also ordered by an arbitrator in November to pay Seagate $525 million, settling a breach-of-contract case brought years earlier. (via Seagate)
