HDD surges: Leading company expands production by 60 billions, why is the top tier competing for magnetic head manufacturers?

In October, Toshiba announced an investment of approximately 60 billion yen (about 380 million USD) to expand its factory in the Philippines, aiming to double HDD production capacity for AI data centers by FY2027, and to increase its market share by capacity from "slightly above 10%" to 30%.

This is Toshiba's first large-scale HDD investment in about five years. Seagate's share price dropped as much as 16% intraday, and Western Digital's fell as much as 14% on the same day.

Bloomberg revealed another piece of news: Seagate and Toshiba are bidding for TDK's hard disk drive head business, with the transaction amount possibly reaching several billion USD. Why are Japanese component manufacturers collectively expanding production this year? TDK plans to increase head production capacity by +50%, Nitto Denko's CISFLEX by +40%, Resonac's disk platters by +31%, and HOYA is building a new glass substrate factory in Vietnam; while the two leading US companies have yet to announce any dedicated HDD capacity expansion plans.