Robert Soderbery on market evolution
From Flash Perspective: A Conversation with Rob Soderbery · · WesternDigitalCorporation
“These were completely independent markets... you would never put a hard drive in a mobile phone, you would have never put flash inside your PC. All of a sudden it became possible to do anything with these technologies, and after a period of confusion it's now become clear these markets are very separate, very distinct.”
On , Robert Soderbery, Executive Vice President & GM of Flash Business at Western Digital Corp, spoke about market evolution during Flash Perspective: A Conversation with Rob Soderbery on WesternDigitalCorporation.
About Robert Soderbery
In a May 2021 interview, Rob Soderbery, Executive Vice President and General Manager of the Flash Business at Western Digital, discussed the company's market position and strategy. He stated that Western Digital has "amazing throw weight in the industry" and described the company as "40% of the bits in the world" and "35% of NAND production." Soderbery said that "virtually every innovation and technology today is powered by Flash," citing applications such as connected cars, VR headsets, and the public cloud. He also argued that hard drives remain the practical choice for long-term data storage due to a "5 or 6x price performance advantage," while Flash is suited for new consumer devices requiring performance. Soderbery highlighted several product announcements as proof points of Western Digital's strategy, including the SanDisk Professional brand, extensions to the WD_BLACK franchise, a partnership with Percona for MySQL and ZNS integration, and a new UFS 3.1 platform for embedded components. He emphasized that the company's approach involves understanding the entire value chain and collaborating with technology customers, stating, "It's not just about NAND. It's about how we deliver products and enable these segments and these customers."