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The Canadian computer storage devices (CSD) market was valued at US$770 million in 1995. In 1996, CSD sales totaled US$897 million and was estimated to reach US$1.04 billion in the next year.
QIC tape mini-cartridges accounts for approximately three quarters of Canadian magnetic tape shipments, but for less than half of the magnetic tape revenues. On the other hand, DAT technology, which offers very high capacities and is well-suited to LANs and larger workgroups, accounts for approximately 20 percent of Canadian magnetic tape shipments but generates approximately 30 percent of revenues in this sector. The 8mm magnetic tape market in Canada accounts for three percent of unit shipments and approximately 20 percent of sector revenues.
Hard drives will continue to be in high demand in the Canadian CSD market for PC production and increased utilization in RAID technology.
The market share of magneto-optical (M-O) storage devices, whose strength lies in their ability to be reused for backup, near-line storage and archival applications, has remained small but stable so far. However, overall M-O units is being overtaken by optical storage devices such as CD-Es.
The optical technology devices was forecasted to exceed magnetic and magnetic-optical revenues in Canada through the 1998 to 2000. CD-ROM and DVD units account for the majority of optical storage device shipments to Canadian end-users through the year 2000.
CD-E devices are emerging as the preferred optical storage technology in the Canadian CSD market due to their good data integrity and large storage capacity. CD-ROM will continue to be the only legally admissible archive medium in Canada. Hard drives will also remain the primary storage device for PCs given their fast access time, transfer rates, capacities and price per megabyte of storage. Finally, floppy disks will continue to be used for data transfer and backup and are expected to maintain their market position in Canada based on their low cost.