Digital Video Applications Propel HDD Market

The demand for gigabytes and terabytes of storage from PC users, game enthusiasts, and TV entertainment folks is keeping the industry growing to the degree that In-Stat forecasts HDD unit shipments will increase to over 1 billion units by 2014. The main drivers of growth have been the notebook PC market, set top boxes, and external storage.

"As video has gone digital, demand for storage is found in consumer applications including set top boxes (STBs), external drives, automotive applications, personal media players, camcorders, home servers, and video cameras," says Norm Bogen, VP, Digital Entertainment. "STBs have been an HDD application target since TiVo pioneered TV recordings and playback and ‘Time Shifting.’ The 3.5" HDDs at 7200 rpm and with capacities starting from 500 GBs to 2 TBs are being offered in this DVR application market. Among consumer applications, external HDDs are the second largest segment behind DVRs and will double in unit volume between 2010 and 2015."

Recent Research by In-Stat found the following:

• The top 5 HDD vendors include Hitachi, Samsung, Seagate, Toshiba and Western Digital. Western Digital has overtaken Seagate as the largest HDD manufacturer for the first half of 2010. Seagate retains its dominant position in enterprise HDDs.
• HDDs have maintained the stopping power against SSDs (Solid State Drives), providing storage at a tenth of the price on a cost/megabit basis.
• Drive capacities are growing at a rate of 40% per year.
• The industry is expected to cross the 1 Tb/sq. inch threshold in the 2012-2013 timeframe.
• The demand for 2.5" mobile/portable drives keeps growing at a faster pace and has outstripped the TAM for desktop drives.
• Cloud storage shifts some of the requirements for massive storage on a PC device to one in the Cloud with a company such as Amazon, Microsoft, Google, etc.

Recent In-Stat research, Worldwide Hard Disk Drive Market by Application (#IN1005036MMT, 39 pages, $3,945) examines the HDD industry from a brief past and then forecasts the state of the industry in the next five years (2010 through 2015).