Last spring, the company launched its second attempt at a hybrid drive, . The device is priced at $113 for a 250GB model. That drive ran into some that Seagate said it has fixed.

"I would say ... Seagate's strategy is for both its hybrid HDD and SSD. It will drive significant consumption of NAND by Seagate over the next several years, so the supply agreement will be a huge benefit for Seagate," Janukowicz said.

Rydning believes the three players left in the business will also ramp up production of SSDs and hybrid drives, even though system manufacturers have been reluctant to include the technology in laptop and desktop computers.

"Only a few PC [manufacturers] are offering SSDs and in most cases it's only an upgrade and not a standard feature. But all the HDD companies are now also SDD companies." he said. "A year from now, we do expect to see more suppliers of hybrid drives."

Lucas Mearian covers storage, disaster recovery and business continuity, financial services infrastructure and health care IT for Computerworld. Follow Lucas on Twitter at , or subscribe to . His e-mail address is .