2023 started even worse for HDD manufacturers than 2022 ended. Seagate, Toshiba and Western Digital only sold around 33.5 million to 34.9 million hard drives worldwide in the first quarter of 2023 – compared to the end of 2022, a further drop of 3.8 to 7.6 percent.
A year earlier, in the first quarter of 2022, the hard drive market was in a clear downturn with 53-55.2 million sales. In 2021, well over 60 million hard drives were sold in each quarter. In previous years, there were sometimes more than 70 million – since then, SSDs have increased, for example in inexpensive notebooks.
As usual, the figures come from the market researcher Trendfocus via the Storage Newsletter; another Breakdown has released Blocks and Files. According to this, so-called nearline hard drives – i.e. HDDs with a particularly high capacity, especially for cloud data centers – have crashed. With a drop of 45.7 percent to around 10.2 million sales, sales have almost halved. The minus for notebooks and desktop PCs was 24 to 33 percent.
Toshiba knocked off
Toshiba was hit hardest at the beginning of 2023, which only sold around 6.7 million hard drives according to the best estimate. Compared to Seagate (1st place) and Western Digital (2nd place), Toshiba is far behind. There are no other HDD manufacturers anymore and Toshiba is also planning to restructure. On the other hand, market leader Seagate is recovering: In the most positive estimate, sales could even have increased slightly again.
| Hard drive sales broken down by manufacturer (Source: Trendfocus) | ||||
|
Manufacturer |
HDDs (millions of pieces) |
Change Q/Q |
change y/y |
market share |
|
Seagate |
15,0-15,5 |
-2,3% bis +1% |
-34,7% bis -32,6% |
44,4–44,8% |
|
Toshiba |
6,3-6,7 |
-21,4% bis -16,5% |
-37,2% bis -33,2% |
18,8–19,2% |
|
Western Digital |
12,2-12,7 |
-5,4% bis -1,5% |
-38,2% bis -35,6% |
36,4–36,8% |
|
In total |
33,5-34,9 |
-7,6% bis -3,8% |
-36,5% bis -33,9% |
100% |
Many hard drives have become cheaper in German retail since the turn of the year, but prices have stabilized in recent weeks. The first models are available for less than 15 euros per terabyte, such as Toshiba’s MG08ACA (from €236.49) or Seagate’s Exos X16 (from €239.89), both with 16 TB of storage capacity.
(mma)
