138 Million HDDs Shipped in 3Q12

TRENDFOCUS, Inc. estimates that the HDD industry shipped approximately 138 million units in CQ3 ’12, just below the Total Available Market (TAM) figures provided by Western Digital and Seagate in September.

This signals both a deteriorated demand environment plus a proactive move to reduce HDD production to better align with a lower near-term TAM.

The market analyst firm’s estimates:

• Mobile HDDs: Approximately 75 million units, up from 72 million shipped in CQ2. Tracking shipment trajectory through the quarter, this segment should have declined. However, there was last-week surge in drive shipments, not atypical for this time of year.
• Desktop HDDs: Unit shipments were well under 50 million HDDs, although this was a mild increase from the prior quarter.
• Enterprise HDDs: Under 15 million units were shipped in the quarter, down from the nearly 18 million sold in CQ2. Traditional enterprise fell shy of 7 million units shipped, off sharply from the 9 million shipped in the prior quarter. TRENDFOCUS has identified a shipment bubble in the first half of the year, and it has burst. Nearline shipments were under 8 million, down from the 8.85 million sold in CQ2.
• Seagate and Western Digital (combined WD and HGST) both endured marked shipment declines, while Toshiba’s shipments eased marginally.

Californian firm TRENDFOCUS estimates that the industry built over 140 million units, largely in anticipation of mild sequential demand increase. However, given the poor demand environment and the apparent lack of a 2H seasonal pickup, HDD shipments will contract in 2012 to below 600 million.