Western Digital wins HDD battle for 2010

NEW TRIPOLI, USA: The HDD market recorded a growth of 17.1 percent in unit shipments to 653.5 million units in 2010, according to our report The Hard Disk Drive Industry: Market Analysis and Processing Trends

The market for 2010, as in 2009, was about product mix. Western Digital (WDC), which has focused on non-desktop applications, primarily the 2.5-inch form factor for mobile and CE, took over the lead in 2010 from Seagate (STX), which has focused on the desktop and the enterprise markets. In 2010, mobile PCs grew 29 percent, while desktop PCs grew only 8 percent.Source: The Information Network.

In the mobile HDD sector, Western Digital led the 2010 market with a 27.5 percent share followed by Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (HIT) with a 26 percent share and Seagate with a 20.4 percent share.

Media Tablets, already cannibalizing Netbooks and Smartbooks, will impact Hard Disk Drive sales as units contain Solid State Drives (SSDs) instead of HDDs, according to The Information Network.

More than 54 million media tablets will sell in 2011, each containing a solid state drive (SSD) instead of a hard disk drive (HDD). The HDD market, already reeling from more than 17 million media tablets sold in 2010, will be impacted by the displacement of HDD-based notebook PCs by media tablets.

In 2011, media tablets are expected to penetrate the entire global community, thereby impacting PC sales and hence HDDs sales in other geographic regions. In 2014, according to the report, the Asia-Pacific region will account for more than 50 percent of media tablet sales.