Seagate plans to stop manufacturing IDE hard drives by the end of the year and will focus exclusively on SATA-based products. Seagate is the first major hard drive manufacturer to announce such plans, though others will likely follow suit as SATA continues to sap PATAs market share. According to a report published at Australian-based ITNews last January, SATA now accounts for 66.7 percent of desktop hard drive sales, 44 percent of laptop sales, and an unspecified (but increasing) amount of enterprise storage connectivity.