Fujitsu today said it plans to break into the 1.8in hard disk drive market, part of a strategy to double the company's unit sales by 2009 and grab third place in the HDD market in the same timeframe.

The move will be made in partnership with US-based small form-factor drive maker Cornice, which will work on product development, Fujitsu said. It didn't disclose the financial foundations upon which the joint effort will be built. It believes its experience with 2.5in drives, and Cornice's with 1in HDDs will enable both to break new ground in the intermediate size, and get into the market quickly.

Quickly, in this context, means more than a year hence. The Japanese giant pledged to introduce a 120GB model in Q2/Q3 2007 - the first half of the company's 2007 fiscal year. Earlier, in FY2006 - Q2 2006 to Q1 2007 - Fujitsu will ship a 200GB 2.5in drive, along with 7200rpm 2.5in products and others using the perpendicular recording technique to boost storage capacities.

It also plans to introduce models capable of withstanding extreme heat and cold for cars and for other non-PC applications. With this expanded product line-up, Fujitsu said it aims to capture 30 per cent of this global market segment - presumably the broader non-enterprise, mobile-oriented 2.5in HDD market.

The company said it will also push 2.5in drives at the enterprise market, in addition to the 3.5in products it already targets at that segment. In FY2006, it will ship a 2.5in 147GB, 10,000rpm 2.5in drive and a 300GB, 15,000rpm 3.5in unit. It will concentrate on the "increasingly popular" serial-attached SCSI (SAS) interface. Again, it's after a 30 per cent share of the enterprise drive arena, it said. ®