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Seagate Named 2006 Company of the Year by Forbes Magazine


WEBWIRE

Hard drive leader singled out for operational excellence, market leadership, innovation and efficiency

SCOTTS VALLEY, Calif.—09 January 2006— Seagate Technology (NYSE:STX) today announced it has been honored with the title of “2006 Company of the Year” in the January 9 issue of Forbes Magazine. In selecting Seagate as its cover story, Forbes lauds the company’s performance against that of 1,000 other publicly traded companies and ranked Seagate as the best of the best.

According to Forbes, Seagate is the biggest and most efficient stand-alone hard-drive maker in the world. Its $925 million net for the past 12 months was three times what its two nearest competitors earned, combined. Its revenue in 2005 climbed 21% to $7.5 billion...For 2006 analysts expect sales to approach $9 billion. By redefining storage as a sexy, high-growth, high-return business, Seagate earns its title as the Forbes Company of the Year.

“This accolade is a tribute to the thousands of Seagate employees around the world who have worked to put hundreds of millions of our hard drives in everything from notebook computers and PCs to servers, music players, TVs, gaming consoles, digital cameras and cars,” said Bill Watkins, Seagate president and chief executive officer. “They have made Seagate not only the leader in hard drives, but now recognized as one of the best, most innovative and most efficient companies in the world.”

“But I would add that the real story for Seagate isn’t this year, it is four-five years from now,” Watkins added. “That’s when I believe Seagate will really start reaching its true potential. We are not a company that stands pat, but rather continues to push ourselves to do better...for our customers, our shareholders, and each other.”

Forbes Magazine highlighted the growing consumer electronics market as a particular area of continuing growth and opportunity for the company: Seagate is riding the world’s gadget boom. Its 1-inch drives are the archives for cameras and MP3 players. Next year they are headed for cell phones. Slightly larger drives are going into Xboxes and TiVos and, starting next year, into the dash of your car. And before long there will be a big, honking Seagate terabyte drive in your closet or on your desktop, a trillion bytes, enough to hold half a million photos.

The January 9 issue of Forbes Magazine in available on newsstands now.

Seagate is the worldwide leader in the design, manufacture and marketing of hard disc drives, providing products for a wide-range of Enterprise, Desktop, Mobile Computing, and Consumer Electronics applications. Seagate’s business model leverages technology leadership and world-class manufacturing to deliver industry-leading innovation and quality to its global customers, and to be the low cost producer in all markets in which it participates. The company is committed to providing award-winning products, customer support and reliability to meet the world’s growing demand for information storage. Seagate was named 2006 Company of the Year by Forbes Magazine. Seagate can be found around the globe and at www.seagate.com.

Seagate, Seagate Technology and the Wave logo are registered trademarks of Seagate Technology LLC. All other trademarks or registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners. When referring to drive capacity one terabyte, or TB, equals one trillion bytes. Accessible capacity may vary depending on operating environment and formatting.

FORWARD LOOKING STATEMENTS
This press release contains forward-looking statements, including statements related to the future financial performance of Seagate, customer demand and future product markets for Seagate. These forward-looking statements are based on information available to Seagate as of the date of this release and current expectations, forecasts and assumptions and involve a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated by these forward-looking statements. Such risks and uncertainties include a variety of factors, some of which are beyond the company’s control. In particular, such risks and uncertainties include the variable demand and the aggressive pricing environment for disc drives; dependence on the company’s ability to successfully manufacture in increasing volumes on a cost-effective basis and with acceptable quality its current disc drive products; and the adverse impact of competitive product announcements. Information concerning additional factors that could cause results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements is contained in the company’s Annual Report on Form 10-K as filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on August 1, 2005 and in Seagate’s subsequently filed Forms 10-Q. The forward-looking statements contained herein should not be relied upon as representing Seagate’s views as of any subsequent date and Seagate undertakes no obligation to update forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date they were made.



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