Know the Reason Why this HDD Market is Sinking Further

There is a continuous decline in hard disk drive (HDD) shipments over the years, according to a report by Coughlin Associates. This can be seen by the declining industry revenues for HDD shipments. By the end of the year 2013, these industry revenues will reach $33 billion, a 12 percent decrease from the previous year $37.8 billion. The reports indicate shipment of 512 million units of HDD in 2013 against 577 million in 2012, i.e. showing a 4 percent decline.

The decline in HDD unit shipments has no effect on the prices and it is expected that they would bring good profits to the manufacturers. The longer refresh cycles for PCs is the major contributing factor to the decline. However, the first quarter of 2013 saw only a 1 percent decrease in the Hard Drive shipments. On the flip side, there was a 14 percent decline in the PC shipments in the same quarter. This can be attributed to the replacement of HDDs in older PCs rather than a purchase of new machines.

Another probable reason for continuing decline in Hard Drive shipments was the advent of tablet computers and the less popular Windows 8 PCs. However, the HDD companies can expect rising growth projections when it comes to HDDs for enterprise applications, ultra-thin notebook PCs, external storage products, and consumer electronic products. The rise of the HDD market will entirely depend on the growth of these major segments for the coming years.

Another area of interest is the inexpensive storage capacity offered by HDDs. As the volumes of data are growing as fast as 40 percent each year, it is very likely that the users will need high storage capacity to accommodate this much content. You may experience higher unit growth rates and it may exceed the last few years’ trends of 14 percent growth annually.