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why does it matter: A recent report by Trendfocus shows that sales of solid state drives continue to skyrocket, while hard drive manufacturers are noticing a record drop in total shipments. Analysts estimate shipments to be down more than 40% compared to 2021.
For decades, hard drives have been consumers’ first choice for computer storage. Hard drives provide an excellent balance of high capacity with lower costs. However, hard drives are beginning to be outdone by solid-state drives (SSDs), which generally offer better performance at a higher price. Despite this (or perhaps because of it), hard drives still held a higher market share for years due to better cost per gigabyte and larger storage capacities.
However, this change For the first time in 2020, when hard drives outsold hard drives. Possibly a major factor in this turnaround in sales is that SSD prices are finally manageable for even the most budget-minded PC users. Surprisingly, Statista noted in September that the charge levels for hard drives were approaching without change In 2021, it is only down 0.5%. Unfortunately for the manufacturers, this slump didn’t last long.
Covers the latest report from Trendfocus analysts quarterly and annually the changes For the three largest hard disk manufacturers – Seagate, Toshiba and Western Digital Corp. (WDC). The results reported in the analysis do not bode well for these producers.
The three leading companies saw sharp declines in 2022. Seagate took the most brutal hit, with estimates ranging between -41.7 and -43.7 percent in hard drive sales. Western Digital is down nearly as much, down 40.7 to 43 percent. Toshiba did the best but saw losses of 37.7 percent and 39.3 percent.
Oddly enough, despite the sharp drop in shipments, 2.5″ solid state drives (HDDs) still “rebounded” by about 15 percent on a quarterly basis. However, those were the only drives that saw sales increase. Drives declined. Consumer discs are averaging single-digit percentages, which, while not promising, is still a far cry from what has happened in the enterprise industry.
Sales of enterprise-focused drives declined due to “low demand for the cloud” within businesses. Trendfocus notes that Seagate, Toshiba, and WDC have sold an estimated 11.5-12.5 million enterprise drives combined, which seems like a lot. However, that did result in a 25 percent drop in shipments quarter-to-quarter.
In general, it seems that there is no limit to the decline in hard drive sales. Solid-state drive prices are rapidly dropping to levels close to hard drives, with 500GB SSDs reaching price parity with 500GB HDDs. There is reason to believe in the will of this equivalence spread to SSDs over 500GB by the end of 2023, which could spell disaster for hard drive manufacturers.
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