C3Q 2023 Hard Disk Drive Industry Update

This data is from the C3Q 2023 HDD shipments from the November 2023 Digital Storage Technology Newsletter.

Total HDD shipments in C3Q 2023 were down 8.2% compared with C2Q 2023 (28.6M versus 31.2M). This continues the downward trend since Q1 2022. Total exabytes shipped in C3Q 2023 were up about 0.61% from C2Q 2023. Total estimated HDD revenues in C3Q 2023 were down about 7% compared to the prior quarter. All storage and memory companies have been experiencing low demand through most of 2022 and 2023 but cut backs in production (both of HDDs and SSDs as well as DRAM) and depleting inventories at data center and enterprise customers may turn around demand, likely starting in C4Q 2023.

Seagate said their HDD revenue was $1.295 B in the quarter with Mass Capacity HDDs accounting for 79% of this revenue. 71% of the company’s product was sold directly to OEMs. Total storage capacity shipped was 89.6EB with 79.2EB for Mass Capacity and 56TB for Nearline HDDs, the balance of 10.4EB was shipped for legacy applications. The average HDD capacity was 7.5TB with Mass Capacity average capacity at 10.3TB and legacy average capacity at 2.5TB. The company shipped about 12M units in the quarter with an ASP of $108.

Western Digital reported that their C3Q 2023 total HDD EB shipments declined by 5% from the prior quarter (I estimate this at 90.0EB) and that they had shipped 61.5EB of nearline storage. They also said that shipped 2.6M client compute units, consumer shipped units were 2.5M and data center (cloud HDD unit shipments) were 5.3M. That means the average capacity of their nearline HDDs was about 11.6TB. The company’s ASP was $112 (up from the prior quarter at $99). Total HDD revenue was $1.194B. Cloud storage was about 32% of the company’s revenue in this quarter (compared to 37% in the prior quarter).

An important development in the HDD industry this quarter that will have a material effect on the industry going forward, particularly on the first increase in product areal density (the information that can be stored on a given area of the disk surfaces of a hard drive) in a long time due to the introduction of heat assisted magnetic (HAMR) HDDs. In particular, David Mosley of Seagate said that, “Qualification and revenue ramp plans for our 30-plus terabyte products (3+ TB/disk) remain fully on track with high-volume ramp starting early in calendar 2024. The launch in ramp of our HAMR products is a competitive differentiator and increasingly important in light of the green shoots that we're starting to see with respect to cloud demand trends.”

He also said that the company plans to introduce HAMR drives with more than 4 TB/disk in less than 2-years’ time. The figure below shows the history of product areal density introductions since 2020, with a recent uptick due to HAMR HDDs in this year.

We saw an 12.2% average sales price (ASP) increase from C2Q 2023 to C2Q 2023 following a 10.8% quarter over quarter decrease in C2Q 2023. The multi-year ASP trends are shown in the image below. Fluctuating demand for high capacity nearline HDDs has been driving fluctuation is HDD ASPs in the last few quarters.

The figure below shows the HDD market share so far in 2023. Toshiba seems to have gained 1% more market share from WDC this last quarter.

The figure below shows our adjusted projections for total shipments of HDD storage capacity on an annual basis to 2028, based upon current trends. Note that if once inventories are consumed and HDD demand comes back these numbers could be much higher. Also, after cutting back production at the HDD plants and the suppliers to these plants it may take a few quarters to get HDD production volume up again to meet demand. Thus, there could be short term shortages in 2024 if HDD demand recovers (likewise with SSDs as well).

Total HDD unit shipments in C3Q 2023 were down 8.2% compared with C2Q 2023. Capacity shipments were up less than 1% from the prior quarter and revenues were down about 7%.