Foreign media: Mechanical hard drives are not dead, ultra-high capacity products are their future

According to foreign media reports, Nidec Corporation, the world's largest supplier of spindle motors for mechanical hard disk products (75% market share), has raised its forecast for mechanical hard disk production in the fourth quarter of last year and the first quarter of this year.

It is reported that the output of hard disk spindle motors has increased year-on-year both quarterly and annually. The increase in spindle motor output also indicates that the mechanical hard disk market is picking up again. Previously, Nidec believed that the shipment of mechanical hard disks decreased by 10% between 2015 and 2016.

It is reported that the rebound in demand for mechanical hard disks is due to the stable demand in the PC market and high-capacity near-line hard disks (i.e., storing data that is not frequently used or has a low access volume on storage devices with lower performance. However, these devices are required to have fast addressing and high transmission rates). Under the influence of various favorable factors, Nidec believes that the shipment volume of mechanical hard disks will continue to rise in the second quarter of this year, but the shipment volume for the whole year of 2017 will still be 4% lower than last year.

According to the latest financial reports from several major hard disk manufacturers, including Seagate, Western Digital and Toshiba, mechanical hard disk shipments may decline by 7.2% between 2016 and 2017, an improvement from the 10% decline in the previous year.

In terms of various market segments, the shipments of high-performance enterprise-class mechanical hard disks fell by 11.3% last year, but near-line hard disks grew by 1.5%, while the shipments of desktop mechanical hard disks and notebook mechanical hard disks fell by 18.6% and 19.9% ​​respectively. Among them, the performance of consumer electronic hard disks was the most eye-catching, with a 20.8% increase in shipments driven by game storage and set-top boxes.

Among the three major mechanical hard disk manufacturers, Western Digital still maintains its leading position, with a market share of 41% last year, followed by Seagate with 37%, and Toshiba with 22%. Toshiba's share has increased, and its market share was 16% in 2015. It is reported that the market share they snatched from Western Digital and Seagate mainly came from consumer electronics and notebooks.

Industry insiders believe that the future of mechanical hard disks will rely on high-capacity mechanical hard disks, and they will become an important part of data center cloud storage services. In its financial report, Seagate said that they will launch 14 and 16TB mechanical hard disks in the next 18 months, and 20TB mechanical hard disks will be born in 2020. However, this is not the ultimate goal of the hard disk industry. From the ATSC roadmap, we can see that 3.5-inch 100TB hard disks will be available in 2025. Therefore, the tug-of-war between mechanical hard disks and solid-state hard disks may continue.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.