Joining Toshiba and GS Magicstor in the really small hard drive segment, Samsung has announced plans to produce a tiny 0.85″ hard drive. Samsung expects the tiny drives to appeal to cell phone manufacturers and has recently produced a phone of their own with a hard drive.

The drives will likely face stiff competition from Flash memory with prices for those already beginning to drop rapidly. Hard drives will have to be very cheap and stingy on batteries to be successful in the mobile phone market segment.

This quote is rather eye-opening:

IDC has a conservative view of how well drives will spin their way into cell phones. About 500,000 mobile phones equipped with a built-in drive will ship in 2005, and the number will rise to 5.2 million in 2008, according to IDC.”