C2Q 2022 HDD Industry Update

Enterprise Tech C2Q 2022 HDD Industry Update Tom Coughlin Contributor Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own. New! Follow this author to stay notified about their latest stories. Got it! Aug 21, 2022, 05:41pm EDT | New! Click on the conversation bubble to join the conversation Got it! Share to Facebook Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin part of a open harddisk getty The data is in for the C2Q 2022 HDD shipments in the August 2022 Digital Storage Technology Newsletter .

Total HDD shipments in CQ2 2022 were down 15. 5% compared with CQ1 2022 (44. 6M versus 52.

8M). Total exabytes shipped in CQ1 2022 were up by 23% from CQ1 2022, driven by higher nearline HDD capacities. Notebook HDD shipments are estimated to be down about 37.

2% from the prior quarter while desktop HDD shipments are down by about 10. 9% Q2Q. CE HDD shipments are estimated down about 26.

7% while branded shipments were down about 11. 5% Q2Q. High performance enterprise HDDs were down about 6.

6% while near line enterprise HDDs were down by abut 5. 9% Q2Q. 3.

5-inch HDDs are estimated to be down about 9. 0%, Q/Q. 2.

5-inch HDDs decreased by about 27. 7% Q2Q. Here are the actual reports from Seagate and Western Digital for C2Q 2022.

Seagate said that they shipped 138. 5EB of mass capacity hard disk drives with 119. 0EB of this being in nearline HDDs.

They shipped 16. 15EB of legacy HDDs. The average drive capacity of mass capacity HDDs was 11.

5TB and the average drive capacity for legacy HDDs was 2. 0TB. Seagate’s overall capacity shipped was 155EB with an average capacity per drive of 7.

8TB. Seagate’s HDD revenue in the quarter was $2,410M. The company is ramping its 18 and 20+TB nearline HDDs (22 TB SMR drives are now available).

At the NAB show in April I talked with companies who have shipped storage systems with Seagate MACH-2 dual actuator drives. In Seagate’s earnings call, Dave Mosley said, “We are also demonstrating technology leadership and executing our product road map to support the growing demand for data. We attained our fastest ever ramp with a 20-plus terabyte nearline platform, handily beating the projections that we made at the start of the quarter.

We are on track to achieve volume and revenue crossover with the 18-terabyte drive in the current quarter. ” And, “We are executing our development plans for the 30 terabyte plus product family based on our innovative and HAMR technology, which enables capacity points of 30, 40, 50 terabytes and beyond to support future data demand growth. ” MORE FOR YOU The 5 Biggest Technology Trends In 2022 ‘Enthusiastic Entrepreneurs’: Pre-IPO Statements On Profitability Prove To Be Larger Than Real Life The 7 Biggest Artificial Intelligence (AI) Trends In 2022 Western Digital reported that their C1Q 2022 total HDD EB shipments increased by1% from the prior quarter (I estimate this at 153EB).

They also said that shipped client compute units were 3. 9M, consumer shipped HDD units were 3. 3M and data center (cloud) HDD unit shipments were 9.

3M. Western Digital said that their ASP in the quarter was $120 (up from $101 in the prior quarter). Cloud storage represented 40% of Western Digital’s revenue in the quarter.

David Goeckeler of WDC said, “We commenced commercial shipment of a number of products incorporating our OptiNAND technology. In addition to shipments of our 20- terabyte and 22-terabyte CMR drives, qualifications of our 26-terabyte SMR drive are underway, as we noted at our product launch event in May. ” He also said that, “In the cloud end market, we experienced strength in the fiscal fourth quarter as supply constraints at Western Digital and our end customers started to ease.

Overall, demand from our cloud customers has been consistently strong and we expect this strength in cloud to carry into the second half of calendar year 2022. We believe the accelerated digital transformation will continue to drive cloud growth and believe we are on track to generate about half of our revenue from this market by fiscal year 2025. ” There was an 13,2% average sales price (ASP) increase from C1Q 2022 to C2Q 2022.

The multi-year ASP trends are shown in the image below. The ASP increase in CQ2 2022 was due to ASP increases at both Seagate and WDC. In general, the increase in the percentage of more expensive mass storage enterprise HDDs has led to an increase in HDDs ASPs since 2015, as legacy applications (e.

g. storage for PCs and high performance enterprise HDDs have lost ground to SSDs). Average Sales Price Trends for HDDs Coughlin Associates Image The image below shows 2022 HDD market share to date (by units).

C2Q HDD Market Share Coughlin Associates Image The image below shows high, median and low estimates of total drive unit volume estimates out to 2026. Based upon Q2 results projections for Q3 from the HDD companies and the current economic outlook we are taking off 20M from our earlier estimates HDD shipments in 2022. High, Median and Low HDD Shipment Projections Coughlin Associates Image We project a doubling of head and media demand by 2026.

The growth of capacity-oriented Nearline drives for enterprise and hyperscale applications will result in more components per drive out to 2027 and provides the biggest driver for heads and media. We project that the total shipments of heads and media will have exceeded the peak in 2014 in 2022. C2Q 2022 HDD shipments were down 15.

5% compared with C1Q 2022. Total exabytes shipped in C1Q 2022 were up by 23% from C1Q 2022, driven by higher nearline HDD capacities. HDD ASPs increased to $120.

We reduced our total 2022 HDD projections. Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn . Check out my website .

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