HDD Shipments to Dip Slightly Sequentially in 4Q15 – Trendfocus

In its SDAS: HDD Information Service, Trendfocus, Inc. published a report, Preliminary CQ4 ’15 Quarterly Update – January 5, 2016, estimating that 115 million to 116 million HDDs were shipped in 4CQ15, a decline of 1.8% to 3.0% compared to 3CQ15 and from 17.3% to 18.3% in comparison with 4CQ14.

The three manufactures of HDDs, WDC, Seagate and Toshiba, are affected by this trend in about the same proportion.

Small client and external HDD shipment increases not enough to overcome seasonal reduction in gaming;  enterprise market ends flat to slightly down.

3.5-inch Desktop/CE HDDs
Total desktop/CE HDD shipments (including 3.5-inch external HDDs) ranged from flat to up around 0.5 million from the prior quarter to 39.5 to 40 million units. Stable, but lackluster demand for desktop PCs along with small seasonal increases in external HDDs kept the category relatively flat.

2.5-inch Mobile/CE HDDs
Net 2.5-inch mobile/CE HDD shipments fell in the range of 2.6 to 3.3 million units due to a combination of seasonal game console HDD declines (in excess of 4 million units) that was countered by slight growth in HDDs for notebook PCs and external HDDs. Preliminary 4CQ15 shipments of 2.5-inch mobile/CE HDDs were in the range of 59 to 60 million units.

3.5-inch/2.5-inch Enterprise HDDs
Weakness in performance enterprise HDDs for traditional IT server/storage drove sequential reductions of high-rpm HDDs in 4CQ15. On the contrary, nearline or capacity enterprise HDDs rose roughly 3% over the same period on slightly improved demand from some large hyperscale customers. As a result, total enterprise HDD shipments totaled 16.4 to 16.7 million units – essentially flat to slightly down from the prior quarter.

Preliminary results of HDD shiments in 4CQ15

* in million
(Source: Trendfocus)