HDD Market Plunging in 1Q20, Units Shipped Down Around 14% Q/Q and 13% Y/Y

In its SDAS: HDD Information Service, Preliminary CQ1 ’20 Quarterly Update, published on April 10, 2020, analyst company Trendfocus, Inc. wrote:

PRELIMINARY CQ1 ’20 Results:
HDD Shipments of $67 Million+ Despite Market Gyrations Due to Coronavirus
Nealine Posts Records Shipments

• 3.5″/2.5″ Enterprise HDDs: Combined strength in US cloud and surging China hyperscale demand fueled nearline HDD shipments to a record level of around 15.7 million units. Based on a solid increasing product mix, total nearline capacity growth outpaced the unit rise and could reach a record 150EB in the quarter. Performance enterprise HDD shipments fell with shipments deeping around 12% Q/Q to roughly 4.2 million HDDs – the drop was well within seasonal ranges, especially given ongoing erosion from SSDs and pandemic – driven uncertainties over production and demand.
• 3.5″ Desktop/CE HDDs: Total desktop/CE HDD shipments (including 3.5″ external HDDs) fell on seasonal declines as well as reduced mi-quarter PC and surveillance system production from extended coronavirus impacts in China. Units dropped approximately 20% Q/Q to around 23 million HDDs.
• 2.5″ Mobile/CE HDDs: Total mobile/CR HDD shipments also plunged roughly 20% Q/Q to approximately 24 million units, owing to similar subsytem production issues from coronavirus impacts as well as falling gaming demand as console makers inventory ahead of the release of new SSD-enabled game systems later in 2020.
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1Q20 preliminary WW HDD shipments

Vendor	HDDs in million	Q/Q growth	Y/Y growth	Market share
Seagate	27.90 – 28.70	-14.8% / -12.4%	-10.8% / -8.3%	42.0% – 42.1%
Toshiba	14.00 – 14.20	-14.1% / -12.8%	-24.2% / -23.1%	21.1% – 20.9%
WDC	24.60 – 25.20	-16.2% / -14.1%	-11.7% / -9.5%	37.0% – 37.0%
TOTAL	66.50 – 68.10	-15.2 / -13.1%	-14.3% / -12.2%	100% – 100%

Final shipments, to be published in Trendfocus’s CQ1’20 Quarterly Update and Executive Summary, may change.