Design Article
Hard disk drive market to decline 12%
Dylan McGrath
2/4/2013 2:15 PM EST
SAN FRANCISCO--Global sales of hard disk drives (HDDs) are expected to decline by about 12 percent this year and decline further in 2014, according to market research firm IHS iSuppli.
As consumers turn their attention away from traditional PCs to tablets, smartphones and new-age type of PCs with solid state drives (SSDs), HDD revenue is projected to slip to about $32.7 billion in 2013, down from $37.1 billion last year. Sales of HDDs are projected to further slip to $32 billion in 2014, IHS said.
"The HDD industry will face myriad challenges in 2013," said Fang Zhang, analyst for storage systems at IHS, in a statement. "Shipments for desktop PCs will slip this year, while notebook sales are under pressure as consumers continue to favor smartphones and tablets. The declining price of SSDs also will allow them to take away some share from conventional HDDs."
HDD gross and operating margins are also likely to decline as a result of continued price erosion, IHS said. But Zhang said HDDs will continue to be the dominant form of storage this year, "especially as demand for ultrabooks picks up and hard drives remain essential in business computing."
IHS said it expects HDDs to continue to dominate the storage market because of their cost advantage relative to SSDs. HDD costs and pricing are significantly lower than SSDs, IHS said, with HDD average selling prices expected to decline a further 7 percent in 2013.
Next: The rise of ultrabooks
As consumers turn their attention away from traditional PCs to tablets, smartphones and new-age type of PCs with solid state drives (SSDs), HDD revenue is projected to slip to about $32.7 billion in 2013, down from $37.1 billion last year. Sales of HDDs are projected to further slip to $32 billion in 2014, IHS said.
"The HDD industry will face myriad challenges in 2013," said Fang Zhang, analyst for storage systems at IHS, in a statement. "Shipments for desktop PCs will slip this year, while notebook sales are under pressure as consumers continue to favor smartphones and tablets. The declining price of SSDs also will allow them to take away some share from conventional HDDs."
HDD gross and operating margins are also likely to decline as a result of continued price erosion, IHS said. But Zhang said HDDs will continue to be the dominant form of storage this year, "especially as demand for ultrabooks picks up and hard drives remain essential in business computing."
IHS said it expects HDDs to continue to dominate the storage market because of their cost advantage relative to SSDs. HDD costs and pricing are significantly lower than SSDs, IHS said, with HDD average selling prices expected to decline a further 7 percent in 2013.
Next: The rise of ultrabooks
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daleste
2/4/2013 9:48 PM EST
I expect the "cloud" to be about the only place consumers will store their data. Plus maybe a USB drive for sensitive stuff. Businesses will still use HDDs for some time. I do expect the CD/DVD drive to disappear much quicker than the HDD.
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eewiz
2/5/2013 5:00 AM EST
Expected to happen.. My question is what WDC and Seagate is planning to do abt it . They even acquired the ailing HDD divisions from samsung, hitachi,maxtor..
Are they going to stand still and enjoy the inevitable slow death OR jump into SSD march with the current 100 other companies and sell commodity SSD drives. OR do some interesting hybrid of HDD & SSD. The current hybrid HDDs are only good for boot speed.
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