Global demand for hard disk drives (HDDs) of all sizes will continually decrease from 561 million units in 2014 to 550 million units in 2015 and further to 538 million units in 2016, according to Taiwan and Shanghai general manager Vincent Chen for HGST.
For HDDs used in notebooks in particular, global demand will slip from 171 million units in 2014 to 161 million units in 2015 and 147 million units in 2016 mainly because global notebook sales are on the decline and increasing adoption of SSDs in notebooks, Chen said. Global demand for HDDs used in desktops will also drop from 156 million units in 2014 to 152 million units in 2015 and 150 million units in 2016, Chen noted.
Thanks to fast growing popularity of mobile terminal devices, however, global demand for HDDs used in personal storage will increase from nearly 80 million units in 2014 to nearly 82 million units in 2015 and further to 87 million units in 2016, Chen indicated.
For business-use HDDs, demand may remain unchanged in sales volume but is expected to grow annually by 1-3% in sales value, and 15-20% in storage capacity, Chen said.
Specifically for business users, HGST launched its first helium-filled HDD model in 2013, Chen noted. Helium-filled HDDs' storage capacity per unit dimension is 33% higher than air-filled models' and therefore such HDDs have lower total cost of ownership, Chen indicated. In addition, helium-filled HDDs are superior to air-filled models in power consumption and reliability, Chen said. As of February 2015, HGST had shipped more than one million helium-filled HDDs with total storage capacity of 7EB, Chen noted.
HGST launched 8TB helium-filled HDDs in September 2014 and will launch 10TB models in the second half of 2015, Chen said. For business users with large storage capacity demand, helium-filled models will account for 50% of all HDDs in 2016 and the proportion will rise to about 80% in 2018, Chen indicated.
