Seagate recently announced that its Hampshire development centre is to shut its doors. The hard drive giant had previously announced that it was aiming to cut 15% of its workforce by 2017, and is blaming the downscaling on the downturn in hard drive sales. They are estimating that 320 jobs will need to be cut.

Seagate said: "It’s not easy to make decisions that affect people’s lives in this way and we regret that approximately 324 employees will be affected by this action." The closure of the Hampshire facility follows the news earlier this year that Seagate are cutting 70 jobs in Londonderry.

Seagate’s bread and butter is traditional hard disk drives, and in recent years the market for solid state drives has increased dramatically. Although Seagate do manufacture solid state drives (SSDs), their market share is way lower.