Marvell 4Q 2012 – Hard Drives Coming Back, SSD Controller Sales Double

Marvell has reported their latest quarter with revenues of $743 million, a 22% decrease over the prior quarter. Marvell’s declines were largely driven by lower hard drive shipments, thanks to the flooding in Thailand that has disrupted the hard drive business for the last several months. Marvell does see a strong recovery in the hard drive space and should benefit from sales growth over the next several quarters. In the SSD space, Marvell doubled revenues from SSD controller sales in the quarter.

Marvell has reported their latest quarter with revenues of $743 million, a 22% decrease over the prior quarter. Marvell’s declines were largely driven by lower hard drive shipments, thanks to the flooding in Thailand that has disrupted the hard drive business for the last several months. Marvell does see a strong recovery in the hard drive space and should benefit from sales growth over the next several quarters. In the SSD space, Marvell doubled revenues from SSD controller sales in the quarter.

Marvell’s CEO Sehat Sutardja had some interesting comments around the ultra-thin notebook space. While the industry is moving to 7mm hard drives to support thin form factors with hard drives like the Hitachi Travelstar Z7K500, Marvell is leading the development of 5mm 2.5″ hard drives. 5mm hard drives are effectively thinner than a cell phone battery, giving notebook designers even more flexibility in system design, without having to give up storage capacity.

Other highlights from Marvell’s storage components businesses:

• Q4 revenues declined 31% sequentially, which accounts for 40% of Marvell’s total revenues for the quarter
• Hard drive recovery has started later than expected, but it’s moving along at full speed now
• Marvell sees big demand for the 2.5″ 500GB/platter SoC solutions which is currently an exclusive in the market and is sold into all hard drive vendors

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