Preliminary 4Q17 Results: HDD Shipments Flat Q/Q at 104-106 Million Q/Q -Trendfocus

In its SDAS: HDD Information Service, Preliminary CQ4 ’17 Quarterly Update, published on January 9, 2018, analyst company Trendfocus, Inc. wrote:

PRELIMINARY CQ4 ’17 Results: Solid Client and Cloud Demand Offset Seasonal Gaming Declines – Shipments Flat to Up at 104 – 106 Million

• 3.5″ Desktop/CE HDDs: Total desktop/CE HDD shipments (including 3.5” external HDDs) rise to nearly 33 million units on end-of-year corporate PC sales million units.
• 2.5″ Mobile/CE HDDs: Solid consumer notebook PC demand for 2.5″ mobile HDDs nearly offset seasonal game console CE HDD reductions resulting in only a slight dip in volumes to just over 55 million units.
• 3.5″/2.5″ Enterprise HDDs: End-of-year corporate IT budget flushing marginally lifted performance enterprise HDD sales, while cloud/hyperscale demand for high capacity nearline
HDDs continued to boom. As a result, total enterprise HDD shipments lifted sequentially to nearly 17 million units.

2017 shipments ease to approximately 403 million – down around 5% year over year.

4CQ17 preliminary WW HDD shipments

Vendor	HDDs in million	Q/Q growth	Y/Y growth	Market share
Seagate	39.50 – 40.00	6/1% / 7.4%	-1/.0% / 0.2%	38.0% – 37.9%
Toshiba	22.50 – 23.00	-8.8% / -6.8%	-15/.9% / -14.1%	21.6% – 21.8%
WDC	42.00 – 42.50	-0.4 / 0.8%	-6.2% / -5.0%	40.4% – 40.3%
TOTAL	104.00 – 105.50	-0.1% / 1.4%	-6.7% / -5.3%	100% – 100%

Final shipments to be published in Trendfocus’s CQ4’17 Quarterly Update and Executive Summary may change measurably.