Trade policy and international production networks: A company-level case study of the Thai hard disk drive industry

This chapter contains the sectoral case study on the Thai hard disk drive (HDD) industry. The HDD industry in Thailand was first established during the early 1980s. By 2008, Thailand had become the second-largest HDD exporter in the world, accounting for about 17.4 per cent of world exports. Four out of six major HDD producers have affiliates in Thailand, including Seagate (since 1983), Hitachi GST (since 1991), Western Digital (since 2002) and Toshiba (since 2008). Thus, sufficient time has passed for an assessment to be made of the development of Thailand’s HDD industry.