Seagate Technology Public Limited Company provides electronic data storage products. The company’s principal products include hard disk drives, commonly referred to as disk drives and hard drives. The company produces a range of electronic data storage products addressing enterprise applications, where its products are designed for enterprise servers, mainframes, and workstations; client compute applications, where its products are designed for desktop and notebook computers; and client non-compute applications, where its products are designed for various end user devices, such as digital video recorders (DVRs), gaming consoles, personal data backup systems, portable external storage systems, and digital media systems. In addition to manufacturing and selling disk drives, it provides data storage services for small- to medium-sized businesses, including online backup, data protection, and recovery solutions. Products The company's primary product offerings are as follows: Enterprise Storage Cheetah SCSI/SAS/Fibre Channel Family: The company’s Cheetah 3.5-inch disk drives ship in 10,000 and 15,000 revolutions per minute (RPM), and in storage capacities ranging from 73 gigabytes (GB) to 600GB. Commercial uses for Cheetah disk drives include Internet and e-commerce servers, data mining and data warehousing, mainframes and supercomputers, department/enterprise servers and workstations, transaction processing, professional video and graphics, and medical imaging. Savvio SCSI/SAS/Fibre Channel Family: The company’s Savvio disk drives ship in 10,000 and 15,000 RPM, and in storage capacities ranging from 73GB to 900GB. Constellation ES SATA Family: The company’s Constellation disk drives ship in both 2.5-inch and 3.5-inch, and in storage capacities of approximately 1 terabytes (TB) and 3TB, respectively, at 7,200 RPM. Pulsar Family: The company’s Pulsar family of products are performance-optimized solid state drives with capacities ranging from 50GB to 800GB. Client Compute Momentus ATA/SATA Family: The company’s Momentus family of disk drives for mobile computing disk drive products ship in 5,400 and 7,200 RPM, and in capacities ranging from 160GB to 1TB. Momentus disk drives are used in notebooks for business, government, education, and consumer applications. Consumer uses for Momentus disk drives also include tablets and digital audio applications. Its Momentus 7200.4 is a 7,200 RPM disk drive for notebooks. Its Momentus Thin is the 7mm z-height, 2.5 inch form factor drive. In addition, it ships hybrid drives into the notebook market with its Momentus XT product line. Hybrid disk drives incorporate both a hard disk drive and NAND flash storage. Barracuda ATA/SATA Family: The company’s Barracuda 3.5-inch disk drives ship in 5,400, 5,900, and 7,200 RPM, and in storage capacities of approximately 3TB. Barracuda disk drives are designed for applications, such as PCs, workstations, and personal external storage devices. Spinpoint SATA Mobile Family: The company’s Spinpoint M8 2.5-inch mobile computing disk drives ship in 5,400 RPM, come in storage capacities of approximately 1 TB, and continue to be produced under the Samsung brand name. Spinpoint SATA Desktop Family: The company’s Spinpoint F3 3.5-inch desktop computing disk drives ship in 7,200 RPM, come in storage capacities of approximately 1 TB, and continue to be produced under the Samsung brand name. Client Non-Compute Pipeline HD and DB35 SATA Family: The company sells its 3.5-inch Pipeline HD and DB35 disk drives primarily for use in DVRs. These disk drives are optimized for digital entertainment and range from 160GB to 2TB. Pipeline Mini SATA Family: The company sells its 2.5-inch, 5,400 RPM Pipeline Mini disk drives, with capacities ranging from 160GB to 500GB, for use in low-profile DVRs, gaming consoles, home entertainment devices, and small footprint media PCs. The company ships external backup storage solutions under its GoFlex, Backup Plus, and Expansion product lines, as well as under the Samsung brand name. These product lines utilize its 3.5-inch and 2.5-inch disk drives, which are available in capacities approximately 3TB and 1TB, respectively. It also ships network attached storage solutions under its GoFlex Home and BlackArmor product lines. These product lines utilize its 3.5-inch disk drives; GoFlex Home products are available in capacities approximately 3TB; and BlackArmor products are available in capacities approximately 12TB. Customers The company sells its products to major original equipment manufacturers, distributors, and retailers. Its retail channel consists of its branded storage products sold to retailers either by the company directly or by its distributors. Its major customers include Dell Inc. and Hewlett-Packard Company. Strategy The company’s product development strategy is to utilize a design platform and/or subsystem within product families to serve different market needs. Research and Development During the year ended 2012, the company had product development expenses of approximately $1,006 million. Patents and Licenses As of June 29, 2012, the company had 5,323 U.S. patents and 1,866 patents issued in various foreign jurisdictions, as well as 1,275 U.S. and 1,156 foreign patent applications pending. Competition The company’s major competitors include Western Digital Corporation and Toshiba Corporation. Significant Events In August 2012, Seagate Technology Public Limited Company announced a strategic alliance with Super Micro Computer, Inc. or Supermicro to focus on expanding the market for Seagate Pulsar solid state drives (SSDs). In January 2013, Seagate Technology Public Limited Company and Virident Systems, Inc. announced a strategic agreement to jointly deliver solutions for the growing enterprise flash storage market. History Seagate Technology Public Limited Company was founded in 1979.