sales of hard drives continue to collapse. Sales of PCs with laptops are also falling

And there is no other way to call this phenomenon, it is a collapse. The fact is that sales of hard drives in the first quarter of 2023 fell by 35% compared to last year. And experts no longer undertake to predict further sales dynamics – everything is too unpredictable. Details are under the cut.

As far as you can tell, very seriously. Thus, Seagate, Toshiba, and Western Digital shipped 33.5 and 34.9 million HDDs, with a 35% year-on-year drop in sales. These data are published Blocks & Files.

At the same time, sales of even the so-called Nearline HDDs are falling, which in normal times are sold quite well. But in the first quarter of 2023, only 10.2 million discs were sold. During the same time period in 2022, 18.8 million discs were sold.

According to Seagate representatives, sales of nearline HDDs will grow further, as hyperscalers, the main consumers of such systems, gradually increase business activity. Moreover, the company is confident that sales will grow in the near future. Seagate’s optimism can only be envied, since earlier more or less optimistic forecasts did not come true. It is difficult to judge what will happen this time, but there are no particular growth factors, and most likely will not be in the near future.

As for conventional HDDs for use in PCs and laptops, their sales are also falling. Compared to the first quarter of 2023, the dynamics showed a decrease in sales by 24% – 33%, depending on the segment.

Despite the complexity of the situation, some companies manage to maintain their market shares. For example, such companies are Seagate and WDC.

What about computer vendors?

We are talking about suppliers of desktop PCs, as well as companies that produce laptops, mini-PCs and so on. It is worth recalling that for the 4th quarter of 2022, sales fell by 28%.

According to both IDC and Gartner, PC sales for the year fell by about 19%, this is a very unfortunate indicator. One of the main reasons for the fall is that stocks of unsold devices in manufacturers’ warehouses continue to grow. The latter counted on the fact that sales would grow, with an eye on the results of previous years and months.

But no, buyers have become much more restrained.

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In general, the situation is difficult, and it is unlikely that it will improve in the near future. Some analysts previously predicted a relatively quick change in the market’s negative dynamics to positive. But now very few people give an optimistic assessment of sales of HDDs and computer hardware.