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2 inputs Nidec Leroy-Somer supplies
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What else they do
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Small Precision Motors (Nidec Parent)
35%Industrial and Commercial Solutions (Nidec Leroy-Somer)
28%Automotive and Appliance Motors
27%Machinery and Infrastructure
10%
Intelligence
What's known
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Did you know2023
Nidec Corporation — the Japanese parent company of Nidec Leroy-Somer, the industrial alternator maker found inside generator sets on every continent — also controls approximately 80% of global hard disk drive spindle motor supply. Every HDD inside AWS, Azure, and Google's exabyte-scale storage arrays spins on a Nidec motor. Every NAS drive at home. Every surveillance camera DVR. Seagate, Western Digital, and Toshiba — the only three HDD manufacturers remaining after three decades of consolidation — all primarily source their spindle motors from the same Kyoto company that makes the alternator in your hospital's backup generator.
Nidec Corporation ↗Capacity2024
Nidec's 80% HDD spindle motor monopoly creates a structural concentration risk for global data storage: any disruption to Nidec's HDD motor facilities in Japan and the Philippines (primary manufacturing sites) would constrain all three HDD makers simultaneously. During the 2011 Thailand floods — which affected HDD disk and platter manufacturing — Nidec's spindle motor supply from Japan was the less-constrained link in the chain, but the event demonstrated how quickly HDD production can be disrupted when any tier-1 component manufacturer is affected. HDD supply is already structurally declining as SSDs gain share; a Nidec disruption would accelerate that transition involuntarily, potentially pushing enterprise buyers to SSD alternatives at higher cost.
Nidec Corporation ↗Origin2023
Nidec was founded in 1973 by Shigenobu Nagamori with ¥680,000 (~$2,000) in a rented farmhouse in Kyoto, originally making small DC brushless motors for cassette tape recorders. Nagamori's insight was that the shift from brushed to brushless motors was inevitable and that precision miniature motor manufacturing required obsessive quality focus. Nidec entered the HDD motor business in the early 1980s, eventually winning IBM's supply contract by offering motors that were smaller, quieter, and more energy-efficient than US competitors. Forty years of continuous market expansion through acquisition — over 60 companies acquired since 2003 — created a $17B revenue company that is simultaneously the world's largest motor maker (by unit volume) and one of the highest market-share monopolies in any technology component (80% of HDD spindle motors).
Nidec Corporation ↗