According to a brand new monetary presentation from Nidec, a Japanese motor producer who’s liable for round 85% of all HDD spindle motors, the corporate believes that shipments of exhausting drives for PCs will drop considerably this yr. Citing quite a few ongoing tendencies, the motor maker is getting ready for HDD motor gross sales to drop by round 50% year-over-year for 2019. Meanwhile the corporate additionally expects gross sales of different varieties of HDDs to gradual, however not as drastically. In reality, unit shipments of exhausting drives for datacenters are projected to extend a bit.
According to Nidec’s information, unit gross sales of exhausting drives declined by round 43% from 2010 to 2018, going from round 650 million models in 2010 to 375 million models in 2018. And it appears to be like like gross sales will proceed to drop within the coming years. Recently Nidec revised its HDD cargo forecast downwards from 356 million drives to 309 million drives in 2019, which is able to additional drop to 290 million models in 2020. The current drops in HDD shipments have already pressured Nidec to optimize its HDD motor manufacturing capacities and repurpose some capability to different varieties of merchandise.
Shipments of PC HDDs have been hit the toughest amongst all varieties of HDDs on account of a mix of basic market weaknesses and the transition of notebooks to SSDs. According to Nidec, shipments of PC HDDs decreased steadily from 289 million drives in 2013 to 124 million gadgets in 2018. However, this yr gross sales of exhausting drives for PCs will drop sharply, going from 124 million gadgets in 2018 to 65 million models in 2019, or by round 48%.
Meanwhile shipments of exhausting drives for broader shopper electronics gadgets is predicted to lower from 77 million HDDs in 2018 to 70 million in 2019. This is probably going being pushed by decrease gross sales of current-generation consoles, surveillance methods, and different gadgets.
There is a vivid spot within the HDD market nonetheless: exterior HDDs in addition to nearline exhausting drives for datacenters are each trying robust. Shipments of the previous will keep flat at round 100 million models, whereas gross sales of the datacenter drives are anticipated to extend to 54 million models, in keeping with Nidec. Conversely, gross sales of enterprise-class drives – which Nidec counts individually from datacenter drives – are anticipated to say no a bit as mission-critical purposes migrate to SSDs.
Amongst all of those shifts in HDD gross sales volumes, it’s noteworthy that the main exhausting drive makers have indicated that whereas unit gross sales of nearline and surveillance HDDs could keep kind of flat (and even drop), their capacities and ASPs are getting larger.
Nidec controls the lion’s share of the marketplace for HDD spindle motors, so its projections are quite useful and positively value testing. Especially as the corporate expects to take care of its excessive market share all through this calendar yr.
Source: Nidec
