Toshiba has developed a 0.85in hard disk platter and will begin sampling drives based on the tiny unit to mobile phone and PDA manufacturers next summer. The 2-3GB drives will go into mass production early 2005, company insiders claim in a Nihon Keizai Shimbun report yesterday.
Pricing has yet to be set, but the sources suggested the drive will ship for around ¥30,000 ($279). Mass production will push that down to ¥10,000 ($93) after a few years on the market, they claimed. Such drives have the potential to bring high storage capacities to handheld devices like mobile phones - a key target market for Toshiba"s 0.85in drive - by offering a sufficiently low power consumption profile (not to mention physical size).