- It is really still about PCs. Approx. 75% of hard disk drives (HDD) shipped were for PC manufacture. However as the traditional PC (desktop and notebook) business sags by 10% expect to see demand for business grade tablets using eMMC memory and solid state drives (SSD) soar
- SSDs are used in almost exclusively in tablets and premium notebooks. Low-cost, lower-performing eMMC with less than 200GB of storage offered in consumer notebooks have shown unsurprisingly weak sales
- SSD are not killing enterprise (data centre) 10,000 and 15,000 rpm HDD. It has at worst blunted this segments growth. Data centre build-outs continue to require HDD’s lower cost for capacity and flexibility
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What is the industry outlook for PCs?
According to Trendfocus the total HDD market has almost nowhere to go but up in the second half of this year – driven by consumer interest in Windows 10.
Hard disks will continue to be the mainstay of consumer notebooks – even the lowest quality 128GB SSD is still more expensive than the 500GB HDD. Over 100 million consumer notebooks where shipped in 2014 and demand will increase in 2015.
While the common denominator is price competitiveness HDDs are standing up well. Tablets generally use lower cost eMMC (embedded Multi-Media Card) storage that is not SSD – it is slower has more in common with a USB flash drive than SSD or HDD.
Speaking of declining sales 9TO5Mac reports that iPad shipments appear to be little more of an iFad these days declining steadily from the height of popularity in 2012. iPad is facing its second year of negative growth. They suggest that the iPhone 6 Plus phablet and the new 12” MacBook have cannibalised growth, Apple’s pricing is unresponsive to market demand, and give tacit recognition of the Microsoft ecosystem making inroads into the professional ranks. It is a good read.
