HDD shipments almost halved in 2022
With the weak market demand and the change in storage technology, HDD shipments have been showing a downward trend. The latest HDD shipment report recently shows that HDD shipments almost halved in 2022, and all manufacturers have experienced a sharp decline.
According to TomsHardware, the most serious decline in HDD shipments was Seagate, the market leader. Data showed that its shipments fell by 43.7% compared with last year, and its market share was 42.9%; the situation of Western Digital is not much better, with a drop of 43% and a market share of 35.1%; Toshiba was slightly better than Seagate and Western Digital, but its shipments also fell by 39.3%, and its market share was 22%. Taken together, HDD shipments in 2022 dropped by 42.5%, falling from 35 million to 36 million units.
Image: Seagate
The decline in HDD shipments has been going on for many years, and it is not surprising that related products are increasingly concentrated in data centers and other storage segments. However, such a large decline in 2022 is mainly due to macroeconomic factors and manufacturers’ inventory adjustments. The overall market trend has affected the three hard disk manufacturers. According to analysts, the biggest dilemma for HDD is the decline in business demand for enterprise cloud storage.
Shipments of 3.5-inch HDDs for general users fell by only 1%, mainly driven by the monitoring field, but 2.5-inch HDDs rebounded by 15% in the fourth quarter, which is somewhat surprising.
92% of laptops sold in 2022 are equipped with SSDs, and the proportion is expected to increase to 96% in 2023.
