Following two major disasters, worldwide hard disk drive (HDD) unit shipments declined year-over-year by 4.5% in 2011, according to International Data Corporation’s (IDC) ‘Worldwide Hard Disk Drive 2012-2016 Forecast: The Industry Hits the Reset Button.’
The research firm says as the efforts to get things back in order at the flooded factory buildings will take up most of the time in first half of 2012, it expects HDD and HDD component production to return to preflood output levels in the second half of this year.
As per IDC’s revised forecast, the HDD industry will record year-over-year unit shipment growth of 7.7% in 2012 and a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 9.6% for the 2011-2016 forecast period.
The supply and demand imbalance caused due to Thailand floods have led to HDD prices moving upwards in recent months.
The research firm says HDD vendors are making use of this situation by trying to offset the losses incurred by them since 2009.
According to IDC, year-over-year HDD revenue growth will surpass shipment growth in 2012.
If hybrid solid state hard drives (hybrid SSHDs) post impressive sales, then HDD industry revenue could approach $50bn by 2016 with a 2011-2016 CAGR of 8.6%, says IDC.
IDC Hard Disk Drives research vice president John Rydning said in many respects, the hard disk drive industry has collectively hit the ‘reset’ button.
"A reset of the HDD industry structure should allow for the remaining HDD industry participants to slowly reduce HDD prices from current levels at a rate that still delivers value to customers, while at the same time ensuring sufficient funding is available to develop new HDD technologies that are needed to improve HDD capacity, performance, reliability, power consumption, and security. Still, long-term revenue growth will only be realized if the remaining participants transform into storage device and storage solution suppliers with a broad range of products for a wide variety of markets," Rydning added.
