Mechanical hard disk drives fail to sell, sales fall by 35 per cent

As we all know, mechanical hard drives have had a tough time over the years, especially with slow technological progress and little improvement in capacity and performance, especially with SSDs making great strides, users and the market are naturally not buying.

According to the latest research data from TrendFocus, in the first quarter of 2023, Seagate, Western Digital and Toshiba shipped a total of 33.5 to 34.9 million mechanical hard drives, down 33.9 to 36.5 percent year-on-year and down 3.8 to 7.6 percent sequentially.

Of these, nearline hard disk drive shipments were the worst at around 10.2 million units, down 54.3 per cent year on year; total capacity was 157EB, down 36 per cent year on year and down 1 per cent sequentially.

PC client and consumer electronics HDD shipments were around 22.5 million, down 28% year on year, with around 12.5 million 3.5-inch drives and 10 million 2.5-inch drives, down 24% and 33% respectively.

On the vendor side, the three major players saw surprisingly consistent declines.

Seagate remained a distant second, shipping 15-15.5 million units, down 32.6-34.7% year on year, with a 44.4-44.8% market share.

Western Digital shipped 12.2-12.7 million units, down 35.9-38.2 percent year on year, with a 36.4 percent share.

Toshiba shipped 6.3-6.7 million units, down 33.2-37.2 percent year-on-year, with a share of 18.8-19.2 percent.