In recent years, China's manufacturing industry has developed rapidly, and some areas have also led the world, which has brought opportunities to the development of China's electronics industry. Seeing that China's technology is developing so well, Tesla intends to build a second gigafactory in China. Today, Japanese companies Toshiba are also struggling to resist the attraction of Chinese manufacturing and intend to invest in China...
On May 5, local time, according to media reports, in order to restore the production capacity of mechanical hard disks, Japan's Toshiba intends to start production of HDD mechanical hard disks in China to meet the growth of storage demand. Samples are expected to be shipped as early as June and mass production will be achieved in July.
It plans to double its production capacity in the fiscal year ending march 2026. The goal is to expand the market share of mechanical hard drives from 18.7% of this year's Q1 share to just over 24% by March 2026.
As SSD solid-state drives continue to seize the hard disk drive market, HDD mechanical hard disks have been difficult to gain a development advantage in the market, and shipments have declined for ten consecutive years.
In the Q1 quarter of this year, affected by the epidemic and emergencies, the global shipments of HDD mechanical hard disks decreased by 14%-17% year-on-year, down 9.8%-13.8% month-on-month, and the total HDD shipments of Seagate, Toshiba and Western Digital were only about 54 million pieces.
At present, there are three main companies left in the mechanical hard disk market, namely Seagate, Western Digital, and Toshiba. Among them, Toshiba is the world's third largest MANUFACTURER of HDD mechanical hard disks, and its shipments in Q1 this year are about 9.9 million to 10.5 million pieces, down 22.5%-26.9% year-on-year, and the market share is about 18.7%-19%.
In the past, the quarterly shipments of Western Digital or Seagate alone could reach 40-50 million units, but SSD SSDs were more efficient, and HDDs could only shrink to 1/3-1/2 of the previous market share. Today's market for HDD mechanical hard disk still has a certain demand, Toshiba intends to work harder in the HDD market to obtain a certain profit.
However, before Toshiba announced that it would withdraw from China, how can it be attracted back now?
In the early days of China's economic development, many Japanese and Korean companies were attracted to invest and build factories in China, which not only provided jobs for China, but also brought a broad market space. In 1991, Japan's Toshiba came to China to build a factory, and it has been more than 30 years. But at the end of September last year, Toshiba announced that it would gradually close its factories in China and relocate some of its operations to Vietnam. why?
In 2013, Toshiba experienced a decline in performance, and in 2016, it was saddled with $8.8 billion in debt, and its businesses were constantly acquired by some companies. The main reason for Toshiba's withdrawal from China is the rapid development of China's manufacturing industry and the lack of competitiveness of Toshiba.
With the development of China's manufacturing industry, many Japanese and Korean companies are difficult to obtain a certain degree of competitiveness in China, so they will choose to move to Southeast Asia under the pretext of withdrawal. But although Southeast Asia has cheap labor, no China has such high-quality skilled workers.
This is also a manifestation of China's manufacturing transformation. Although there are many Chinese population, the number of people is no longer the key to victory, and the rapid development of technology in China has put Japanese and Korean companies under pressure.
Analysts believe that Toshiba chose to return to the Chinese market to produce HDD mechanical hard disks, in addition to focusing on the quality of China's labor force, but also because today's manufacturing mechanization is developing rapidly, which can improve Toshiba's production efficiency.
Japanese and South Korean companies such as Toshiba choose to withdraw from China due to lack of competitiveness, which will bring development opportunities to China's domestic manufacturing industry, and the industrial chain of Chinese manufacturing will become more and more perfect in the future, helping China's development.
Text | Zhao Jinjie title | Zeng Yi reviewed | Lee Ze-plutonium