Windows Phone Thoughts: Huge Sales for Tiny Hard Disks

Mario Apicella from Infoworld has written an article about the recent upsurge of activity surrounding Microdrives. He mentions the recent Hitachi announcement about "Mikey", which use 40% less power, is 20% physically smaller and goes up to 8Gb in size, as well as the new 6Gb Western Digital microdrive. The predicated grow rates for the sale of these tiny hard disks are huge, which means that manufacturers are eager to get into the market:



". . . [I]t's easy to speculate that the increased competition will lower prices, which will translate into a more affordable -- and possibly even faster-growing -- market for gizmos based on the drives. Another possible effect is to trigger lower prices and higher capacities for flash drives, microdrives' technology rival. This is good news if moving a spinning drive has you worried about the safety of your data. Looking further ahead, I like to imagine that the availability of large and inexpensive personal drives will inspire the building of a quintessential super-gizmo, perhaps a combination of cell phone, PDA, camcorder, laptop, MP3 player, and more where I can store and retrieve a lifetime of music, images, and personal information, including copies of my medical records (why not?). . . . If microdrives can help us live better and longer, I'm all for them. What about you?"