HDD Trends and Impacts

 Multiple reports are coming out from industry analysts (Trendfocus, IDC, IHS, Gartner) on the HDD market for past year. Some interesting numbers on Units, Density, Cost, and Markets:

• HDD Units relatively flat in 400Mu unit range for past 2 years (down from 2010 peak ~600M Units) . Less PCs sold and SSD encroachment in notebooks reduced TAM. 
• HDD Capacity increasing 15% per year or more
• HDD Mission critical (10K+15K) units down 25% from peak in 2012, Revenue down 50%
• HDD Mission critical  (10K+15K) capacity is flat for past 2 years
• HDD PC Capacity is relatively flat for past few years. CE and Enterprise Capacity is up.
• HDD Cost and price per TB is down 12%+ per year. 500GB HDDs sell for less than $30 to PC OEMs

Lots more data available and how this affects the NAND/SSD market over the next few years

Some thoughts:

• 10K and 15K market should be dead. SSDs are better and lower price per IOP... but its a slow death (Even though HDD makers 
• SSDs should be this entire market with 25M units or more per year
• SATA/PCIe will take this over in next 3-5 years

• HDD Nearline market is growing rapidly with little impact from SSDs expected. >6TBs per drive at a cost well below $30/TB and costs dropping 10-15% per year. The date explosions is driving this market for storage

• Now that NAND shortage is over, we expect SSDs resume steady penetration into PC market. Most PCs still ship with HDDs today. 

• We are still several years away from SSD units outselling HDD Units . 10+ years from SSD capacity outselling SSD capacity

Mark Webb
www.mkwventures.com

Relative Costs for NAND, ZNAND, Optane Memory

What are the relative costs for the memory types in these new SSDs? We have the estimates below!
                                                                                                       
                                                                                                           
                                                                                                         
                                                                                                                 







Caveats:

• These are costs, not prices. Margins vary
• These are approximate costs in 2018 for the memory in key products
• All are relative to HDD costs

HDD is of course the cost leader... everything else falls into a spectrum of costs. Some products are more mature than others and that affects their cost today

Actual values, assumptions, prices and how these will change dramatically over the next two years is available as well

Mark Webb
www.mkwventures.com