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Pressure from SSDs and declining demand will affect the market

The traditional hard drive market has been under assault from various factors over the last several years. One of the biggest factors affecting hard drives has been the decline in the computer industry. With fewer sales of computers, fewer hard drives are required leading to declining profits. At the same time, as notebooks get thinner, manufacturers are increasingly using solid-state drives.

Market research firm iSuppli reports that hard drive market revenue is expected to decline in double-digit numbers during 2013. The research firm is predicting revenue of $32.7 billion for 2013, a decline of 11.8% from 2012. The research firm also believes that revenue for the hard drive market will be flat in 2014 with a revenue forecast of $32 billion.

“The HDD industry will face myriad challenges in 2013,” said Fang Zhang, analyst for storage systems at IHS. “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.”

ISuppli also expects that gross and operating margins for hard drive manufacturers will continue to decline thanks to price erosion in the market. Despite declining profits, the research firm predicts that hard drives will continue to be the dominant form of storage during 2013, particularly in the ultrabook and business realms.

Source: iSuppli


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New meta
By Shadowmaster625 on 2/6/2013 10:59:40 AM , Rating: 1
5 years ago if you had 3-5 computers in your house they all had 320-500GB HDDs. 10 years ago if you had 3 computers, they all had 40-160GB HDDs. See the pattern? So today, does it mean you should have a bunch of 500GB-2TB HDDs? Nope. You have each machine with a 60-128GB SSD, and they all share a NAS. The paradigm has changed. And not in the favor of HDD manufacturers. Really it is their fault for not simply building a decent hybrid drive. There is no reason anyone should pay more than a $20 premium for a 8GB hybrid solution. But they are just being stupid about it. All it takes is 8GB of MLC NAND, 128MB of cache, and some well written firmware, and there would be no market for SSDs because the real world perfomance of HDDs would be excellent. But like I said they really dropped the ball.




RE: New meta
By Silver2k7 on 2/6/2013 3:04:59 PM , Rating: 2
My smallest HDD still in use is a 750GB wich I think is from 2006. It will probably be replaced by a 2TB. Then my smallest drive in use will be 1TB. Perhaps im not the typical user. :)


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