The end of hard drives is near: sales fall 33% year on year

Hard drives have been a key part of computing ever since early models 10 MB which appeared in the 80s and cost more than 3,000 euros.

Today they are still widely used as Storage Systembut its decline is a fact, and it seems to be final.

Key fact: only 45 million units were sold worldwide in the second quarter of 2022. During the same period in 2010, 162 million units were sold. But it’s not just about the amount. Also, fast drop:

This table published on the Storage website is very revealing. tells us that sales in the second quarter of 2022 fell by 12-16%. all manufacturers compared to last year. The fall is from 31 to 34% year on year.

At this rate, hard drives will soon become niche product. Will they disappear completely? That’s not why there will always be a need for reliable, massive and cheap storage systemslike hard drives.

But yes they will no longer be installed on computers for everyday useand they will remain as an external storage system.

The table also shows us that top selling brand – Seagate, which accounts for about 45% of the market. It is followed by Western Digital (WD) with 37.2% and Toshiba with 18%.

What is it drop in sales of hard drives?

First of all, to the evolution of solid state driveswhich increased their power and life cycle, but fell in price.

also to cloud usagewhich means that more and more applications and data are stored online rather than on a computer.

Many users have switched to mobile devicesfrom smartphones to tablets and other solutions that do not use hard drives.

Finally, end of pandemic and return to offices and institutions reduced the demand for laptops for remote work, study or recreation in custody.