HDD shipments have dropped drastically over the past year for the three big companies, although the drop at Seagate and WDC has been nearly half that of the industry average.

Trendfocus sheds light on the destruction in the mechanical storage sector. The top HDD storage providers, their shipments, and their market shares are all discussed in the Trendfocus study paper, an excerpt of which was published in the Storage Newsletter and which extends all the way out to 2022.

Data shows that the largest company in the HDD industry is also the worst performing. Last year, HDD shipments plummeted by as much as 43.7% for Seagate and by almost as much for WDC, 43.0%. By 2022, however, Toshiba was not immune to the market downturn, with HDD shipments decreasing by as much as 39.3 percent year over year (YoY).

In addition, industry shipments dropped as much as 42.5% annually to around 35-36 million products. According to Trendfocus, the decline in demand from enterprise cloud storage providers is the largest problem HDD storage manufacturers face right now. 

Half-terabyte HDDs and SSDs have recently reached parity in pricing, which we reported on previously. That report by TrendForce (not to be confused with Trendfocus) was quite discouraging for the laptop HDD business; it predicted that by 2023, 96% of all laptops sold would have solid-state drives.

HDD Sales Declined, cut in half in 2022