HDD shipments fell sharply in 2022Q2
With weak market demand, HDD market shipments fell sharply in 2022Q2, down by about one-third year-on-year. According to Storage Newsletter, even with the strong demand for data centers in the past two years and the increasing density of HDDs, it is still difficult to prevent a sharp decline in shipments.
In the second quarter of 2022, HDD shipments totaled 45 million units, a huge gap from the peak of 651 million units in 2010. The enterprise side is the best-performing segment. Cloud computing and high-performance computing still require cheap, low-power, high-density storage, but the demand is still down compared to last year, with shipments down 26.9% to 29.7% year-on-year; 3.5-inch HDDs (including external hard drives) on the client side fell by more than 30% year-on-year, and HDDs for both retail and surveillance use were inevitable; the client’s 2.5-inch HDD fell by about 40% year-on-year, which was largely affected by SSD in addition to the overall market demand reduction.
In terms of manufacturers, Seagate occupies the largest market share, about 44.5%, and the decline is also the smallest, which is controlled by 30%; followed by Western Digital, the market share is about 37.2%; Toshiba’s market share is about 18.3%, and it is the manufacturer with the largest drop in shipments, which is about 40%.
The recent decline in the price of NAND flash chips has led to a decline in the price of SSDs. Both OEMs and individual consumers are more inclined to choose SSDs. According to statistics, the prices of TLC and QLC pellets fell by 8% to 13% in the second quarter of 2022, and are expected to fall further by 5% to 10% in the third quarter. It was previously reported that Microsoft plans to include SSDs in the basic requirements of Windows 11 PCs, forcing OEMs to adopt SSDs as boot disks, in 2023. If Microsoft really has plans in this regard, the client HDD will face a fatal blow.
