HDD market to hit back in 2012
Sales and shipments of storage technology to grow as market recovers from fallout of natural disasters
After a tumultuous 2011, the hard disk drive (HDD) market is forecast to rebound strongly over the coming years and grow to a nigh-on $50bn market by 2016.
The market was rocked last year by natural disasters in Japan and Thailand, which both affected supply chains. But, with factory output levels expected to return to normal during the second half of 2012, IDC projects that global HDD shipments will grow 7.7 per cent this year. And, for the first time, revenue expansion is expected to exceed shipment growth, as prices have risen in light of shortages.
For the 2011-to-2016 period, IDC forecasts that the HDD space will enjoy a compound annual growth rate of 8.6 per cent, in revenue terms. Total market worth could be nearing $50bn (£31bn) in 2016, predicts the market-watcher.
Providing much of the fuel for growth will be the use of HDD technology in personal and entry-level storage kit, as well as enterprise applications. Meanwhile, HDD revenue from the storage market is forecast to decline.
IDC also suggests that the success of hybrid solid state hard drives will be key to the overall market's performance in the coming years. The analysts believes the cost of SSD kit is still proving prohibitive to its use in new PCs.
John Rydning, hard disk drives research vice president at IDC, said: "In many respects, the hard disk drive industry has collectively hit the 'reset' button.
"A reset of the HDD industry structure should allow for the remaining HDD industry participants to slowly reduce HDD prices from current levels at a rate that still delivers value to customers, while at the same time ensuring sufficient funding is available to develop new HDD technologies that are needed to improve HDD capacity, performance, reliability, power consumption and security.
"Still, long-term revenue growth will only be realised if the remaining participants transform into storage device and storage solution suppliers with a broad range of products for a wide variety of markets."