Seagate, Toshiba, and WDC should all be shipping out around the same amount of hard drives, but Toshiba's demand is down between 30 and 40 percent.
According to Trendfocus statistics published by Storage Newsletter, demand in all market sectors is down or at best flat compared to the previous year. Compared to the same period last year, the number of nearline enterprise drives has remained constant at around 19 million units, while the number of performance enterprise drives has decreased to approximately 2.5 million units.
• 3.5″/2.5″ Enterprise HDDs: While OEMs carried inventory over from the prior quarter and experienced some weakening of demand along with continuing system component shortages in some cases, performance enterprise HDD demand only dipped slightly, falling to around 2.5 million units for the quarter. Nearline shipments held essentially flat at around 19 million despite mixed hyperscale and softening OEM demand.
• 3.5″ Desktop/CE HDDs: Total 3.5″ desktop/CE HDD shipments (including 3.5″ external HDDs) plunged to approximately 13 million units with weakness spanning surveillance, PC and retail. The sequential reduction represents a drop of well over 30%.
• 2.5″ Mobile/CE HDDs: Preliminary information indicates that 2.5″ mobile/CE HDD shipments suffered the largest Q/Q reduction, plummeting an estimated 40% Q/Q to around 11 million units. Serving only niche categories, 2.5″ CE shipments represent only a tiny fraction of the total. The bulk of the shipment reductions were caused by weak retail shipments as well as a softening PC market that has largely shifted to flash-based storage solutions.
Worse yet, shipments of 3.5-inch and 2.5-inch hard drives for PCs and consumer devices have fallen by 30 and 40 percent, respectively. In Q2, about 13 million 3.5-inch hard drives and 11 million 2.5-inch hard drives were still shipped. However, with less demand for computers and more and more computers switching to SSDs, hard drives are now mostly used as backups. Seagate was least affected by the decline in demand, but the business is nonetheless seeing a close to 30 percent decline in revenue. WDC is in second place with a decline of over 30 percent, followed by Toshiba with a decline of up to 40 percent.
2Q22 WW HDD shipments
| Vendor | HDDs in million | Q/Q change | Y/Y change |
Market share |
| Seagate | 19.80 – 20.60 | -13.8 – -10.4% |
-29.7% – -26.9% | 44.7%- 44.3% |
| Toshiba | 8.00 – 8.60 | -20.2% – -14.3% |
-42.8% – -38.5% | 18.1% – 18.5% |
| WDC | 16.50 – 17.30 | -16.5% – -12.4% | -34.6% – -31.4% | 37.2% – 37.2% |
| TOTAL | 44.30-46.50 |
-16.0% – -11.9% |
-34.2% – -31.0% |
*Preliminary data – values may change.
HDD Sales dropped by 30 to 40% the past year
