India key market, we see potential opportunities, Seagate says after new launches

Seagate is announcing the availability of two new products in India, the award-winning Seagate Seven and Seagate Wireless. Both drives have unique attributes that cater to the needs of today’s consumers, both in terms of form and function.

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Seagate Seven portable hard drive is the world’s slimmest 500GB portable, at only 7mm thickness and represents the culmination of the latest cutting-edge technologies and manufacturing processes. Its stainless steel case gives it an elegant yet rugged look, and comes with extreme Gyro handling capabilities that absorb the shocks and bumps that may occur when consumers carry this drive in their bags or pockets. Seagate Seven has been awarded the prestigious iF Design and Red Dot Design awards. The Seagate Seven 500GB drive works equally well with both Windows and Mac machines, and offers enough storage for several thousand music or photo files and hundreds of movies, so consumers can carry all the content they love with them anywhere.

Seagate Wireless

Seagate Wireless is a 500GB portable wireless storage solution designed especially for consumers who want to stream and offload media from their mobile devices. As consumers in India and around the world are increasingly creating, uploading, downloading and sharing information on-the-go, this drive is the ideal solution to let them carry everything they want on their mobile devices and alleviates the challenge of running out of storage space on smartphones and tablets. They can carry up to 200 HD movies and watch them on-the-go, even without Internet access, and even share and stream this content to up to three connected devices simultaneously. Seagate Wireless comes in a range of vibrant colours – lime green, cool blue, slate grey, fire-engine red and white – so consumers can also match their portable drives to their phones or outfits.

What are the new trends in storage drives?

We live in a connected world where the growth of mobility is bringing changes in data consumption patterns and creating new demands from consumers and businesses. With the amount of content that can be created, stored and accessed on the go, consumers are facing storage constraint issues on their smartphones and email accounts. While some consumers have started storing their content in the cloud, many are still unsure of how, and are concerned about potential security breaches. This is driving them to look for alternate ways to easily and securely store and back-up their digital memories.

Seagate believes that portable and wireless storage drives will become standard for consumers, and we are committed to leading the innovations in this segment in response to consumer needs.

Elaborate on the target audiences and go-to-market strategy for the devices being launched today?

Seagate Seven and Seagate Wireless portable drives will appeal to anyone who uses a smartphone, tablet or other mobile device and stores digital content in it. These consumers have embraced the idea of carrying and sharing their content on the go, and require greater storage capacities to do so. Our products let them access, store and share this content easily, anywhere.

India is witnessing an upsurge in the use of smartphones and broadband access, resulting in the creation of a lot of data. The country is one of the fastest growing smartphone markets in the world and this proliferation of devices is driving the need for advanced portable storage solutions.

Seagate Seven’s uniqueness lies in its size, portability and design, whereas Seagate Wireless offers more space for consumers to carry their digital content, anywhere they go. It can set users free from the limitations imposed by the capacity of their mobile devices and the mobile network availability. Both drives balance minimalist style and geek chic, and would appeal to even the most discerning consumers. With its ability to stream and share content easily with multiple devices simultaneously, we anticipate the Seagate Wireless drive will become a favourite companion to mobile devices.

How is the portable storage space shaping up in India? Are portable drives becoming redundant in a way with mobile phone users switching to the cloud?

The portable storage space is gathering pace at a rapid rate in India. The growing popularity of camera-equipped devices such as smartphones and tablets has allowed consumers to create a large amount of digital content, which in turn has led to rising capacity demands to store that content.

Indian consumers have also evolved in how they store content, and many have begun to use portable storage devices or cloud solutions. Now that portable drives have become more affordable, we are also seeing an uptake in the number of consumers using portable hard drives with high storage capacity. These drives are gaining popularity even in India, since they can store, protect and share one’s entire digital life, anywhere with just a click!

How important is India as a market for Seagate?

India is one of our key markets and we see a lot of potential opportunities here. Consumers are rapidly embracing and adopting new technologies like cloud and portable storage, and with the government’s Digital India campaign, we expect to see deeper mobile device penetration and increasing use of video, big data analytics and the cloud. All of this will continue to drive data growth and require larger and more effective storage solutions. As the leader in storage solutions, Seagate will continue to bring to market innovative solutions that will meet the evolving consumer lifestyle needs.

In India, we work closely with our partners to deliver to customers the best-in-class storage solutions that represent the best innovations available. Seagate has a very loyal base of partners in India and we continuously take partners and customers feedback to ensure we create a win-win scenario.