3Q12 HDD Shipments Fall 11.4% to 139 Million

Analyst company TRENDFOCUS just published its SDAS: HDD
Information Service CQ3’12 Quarterly Update. Here is an abstract.

 

       3Q12 HDD Ranking
         in Units Shipped

 (Source: TRENDFOCUS)

Seagate
Seagate’s (combined with Samsung) shipments
dropped to 57.6 million for the quarter, down from 65.9 in CQ2 12. Desktop HDD shipments
(including retail/branded) out shipped mobile HDDs but both segments declined sequentially.
Desktop HDD unit shipments were 21.6 million, down 2.3 million from quarter-to-quarter,
while mobile HDD shipments dropped to 23.2 million, off 1.9  million for the same period. Consumer HDDs
shipments fell from 7.4 million in CQ2 to 6.5 million in CQ3. Branded HDD sales
grew in CQ3 by 1 million units to 4.8 million, and enterprise  HDD shipments, which include nearline HDDs,
pulled back to 6.3 million units. Traditional enterprise (mission critical) HDD
volumes totaled 3.3 million compared to nearline (business critical) HDDs at 3.0
million in CQ3 ’12.

Toshiba
Toshiba’s shipments dipped slightly in CQ3 to
19.1 million, down from the prior quarter’s 20.1 million. Mobile HDDs accounted
for just over 75% of the company’s total sales in CQ3, or 14.69 million. Consumer
and enterprise shipments both declined for the quarter to 1.95 million and 0.88
million, down 34% and 39%, respectively. On a positive note, Toshiba reached a milestone
in CQ3 by shipping its first 3.5" desktop HDDn, the platform acquired from
HGST as part of WDC/HGST MOFCOM regulatory stipulation. Toshiba’s first quarter
of desktop HDD shipments topped 1.5 million in CQ3.

Western Digital
WDC’s shipments (including HGST) declined to
62.5 million in CQ3 ’12, down from 71.0 million in the prior quarter. All segments
were down for the quarter due to overall weakness in the market. Desktop HDD shipments
dropped to 18.31 million, down from 21.84 million in CQ2. Consumer HDD segment totaled
8.1 million, down from 10.13 million in the prior quarter. WDC’s enterprise shipments
(including nearline) pulled back to just over 6 million down from last
quarter’s record of 7.9 million. Of the 6 million enterprise HDDs, business
critical (nearline) was 3.9 million.