Bill Watkins on FreeAgent

More video + more unprotected content = new products

Seagate CEO Bill Watkins spent 3 1/2 minutes with MarketWatch talking about the new FreeAgent line and consumer storage trends. Two takeaways:

1. It’s all about video. This is a recurring trend here at Storage Effect. When Seagate developed a storage calculator for PCs, it was immediately clear that video swamped all other forms of content for consumer storage.
2. People aren’t backing up their content. Bill said 17% of U.S. consumers aren’t backing up their content.  Is this a “sub-prime mortgage” kind of thing where people don’t realize the risk they’re taking?  I think it’s more that they just don’t know how exactly, and it’s not at the top of the list in a busy world.

Takeaway 1 will eventually overcome Takeaway 2.  Hopefully it happens via easier-to-use products like FreeAgent and not as a response to a painful content loss.