Western Digital Unveils My Passport Pro Dual-Drive - Analyst Blog

Storage solutions provider Western Digital Corp. WDC recently announced the launch of portable My Passport Pro dual-drive. The new Thunderbolt-powered dual drive storage solution can be used with portable devices such as smartphones, tablets, Apple's AAPL MacBook and USB drives. This storage device is expected to enhance overall drive capacity, reliability and performance.

My Passport Pro enables quick access to files and is more power efficient resulting in longer battery life. It also enables users to manage huge volumes of digital data, which in turn helps them to store, organize and secure photos, videos, music and important documents.

Additionally, My Passport Pro includes RAID (redundant array of inexpensive disks) solutions that enable data storage using multiple drives and various data replication strategies to minimize the impact of the failure of any one drive. The launch of My Passport Pro will help Western Digital to meet growing business needs with improved flexibility and security.

My Passport Pro is available in 2 TB and 4 TB capacities, thus providing adequate storage. It is an exceptionally fast and cost-effective addition to the Western Digital dual drive portfolio. It offers up to 233MB/sec sequential read and write speeds.

Priced at $299.99 for 2 TB and $429.99 for 4 TB, My Passport Pro will be available at Apple and consumer electronics retailers.

With such launches, we expect Western Digital to strengthen its market position against the likes of Seagate Technology STX and Fusion-io.

According to a recent survey by Gartner, the average household will require about 3.3 TB of storage by 2016. The growing demand requires a new storage standard and easy accessibility. We believe that Western Digital's new portable dual drive product will benefit from pent up demand in the storage market.

Of late, Western Digital has been expanding its presence in SSD storage due to sluggish demand in the PC market (which primarily relies on HDD). SSDs are now being used in servers due to the reduction in latency, which in turn helps in faster response to real-time applications. Therefore, focusing on SSDs for the enterprise segment looks like a smart move in the current scenario.
 
Currently, Western Digital has a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). A better ranked stock in the technology sector is  Lexmark International Inc. LXK, which carries a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy).