Seagate Technology (NYSE: STX), the world leader in the manufacture of hard disk drives, has announced a significant step in its product line that signifies the changing economic realities of the computer storage market. The company, which has been the fiercest proponent of pushing its magnetic platter-based hard drives for over two decades, will begin making hard drives based on flash memory instead of magnetic disks spinning at 7,200 RPM or higher. Seagate is a little-seen brand, but its products probably power that web server you're connected to right now, that iPod you listen to, the TiVo you watch, and the Xbox you play.

This was just waiting to happen, and Seagate picked the right time in the intensely competitive storage market to make this commitment. Right now, computer storage for that laptop, TiVo box or Xbox 360 is way, way cheaper to accomplish using disk-based storage. But, as the cost has dropped and the capacity has risen for solid-state storage, magnetic hard drives have all but been pushed from items with lower storage needs, like MP3 players and many iPod models (although the larger iPod models still use traditional hard drives).

Will Seagate abandon its bread-n-butter magnetic hard drive business? Don't count on it -- it's likely that magnetic-type storage will still enjoy an immense cost advantage in the near future even in the face of rapidly falling prices for flash-based chips. But, instead of fighting the battle any longer, Seagate is making the right decision to compete in the developing flash hard drive market -- even if that market will be rather small in the near future. Seagate at least wants to cover all the technologies in all the storage markets, which is strategically commendable.