According to a new report from Trendfocus, HDD mechanical hard drive shipments almost halved in 2022, with shipments from all manufacturers falling sharply, and shipments from Seagate and Western Digital also almost halved.
According to this data, all three giants of the mechanical HDD HDD industry saw significant sales declines in 2022. 2022 saw Seagate’s HDD shipments fall by 43.7 percent and Western Digital was equally bad, down 43.0 percent year-over-year. Toshiba’s 2022 shipments fell 39.3 percent year-over-year.
▲ Figure source Trendfocus
Overall, HDD shipments fell 42.5 percent in 2022, to about 35 million or 36 million.
Trendfocus believes that the biggest disaster for HDD storage manufacturers right now is the decline in demand from the enterprise cloud storage business. 2022 cloud storage company mergers and inventory corrections saw 10 million to 11 million fewer HDDs purchased in the fourth quarter compared to the same period last year.
By category, shipments of 3.5-inch HDDs for general users fell 1 percent, while shipments of 2.5-inch HDDs grew 15 percent. Analysts say that in 2022, 92 percent of laptops sold were equipped with solid-state drives, a figure that will rise to 96 percent in 2023.
