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The Hewlett-Packard HP3013/3014, nicknamed Kittyhawk, was a hard disk drive introduced by Hewlett-Packard on June 9, 1992. Developed with assistance from AT&T and manufactured by Citizen Watch, it was the smallest hard disk drive in the world at the time of its launch. Despite its innovative design, the Kittyhawk was ultimately a commercial failure due to its high cost.
Despite its remarkable characteristics, Kittyhawk turned out to be a commercial failure. It was not in demand from notebook industry due to its inferior cost per megabyte and capacity. A few OEM suppliers adopted the drive, including an early pen based computer maker EO, which ran the GO operating system. The handheld market failed to take off in early 1990s as expected. Many potential markets, such as the video game console market, were missed due to hard drive's high production costs.
Kittyhawk was discontinued by HP in September 1994. Approximately 160,000 units were actually sold compared to projected 2-year sales of 700,000 units. In 1996, largely due to Kittyhawk's failure, Hewlett-Packard closed its Disk Memory Division and exited the disk drive business.
The story of HP Kittyhawk is described in a Harvard Business School business case "Hewlett-Packard: The Flight of the Kittyhawk", and is a case study in the book The Innovator's Dilemma by Clayton M. Christensen.
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