You might not know about Nidec, but this Japanese company makes the spindle motors inside around 85% of all HDDs in the world-- and it now warns the sales of motors used in PC HDDs are set to drop by -50% in 2019.
According to the Nidec fiscal 2018 (ending 31 March 2019) financial report, HDD unit sales are down by 43% from 2010 to 2018, falling from a 2010 high of around 650 million units to 375m in 2018. The company predicts such a trend is only set to continue, with 2019 sales set to drop to 309m before falling to 290m in 2020. As for the kinds of HDDs worst affect by the downturn Nidec points at PC HDDs, with sales falling from 289m in 2013 to 124m in 2018.
An even worse decline is expected for PC HDDs in 2019, as sales are expected to total 65m, a -48% decrease from 2018. As to why such a downturn is taking place, the result is perhaps obvious. After all, we all know how weak the PC market currently is, and the current transition towards storage of the SSD variety only hits HDDs even further.
The company says HDDs destined for other CE applications are also on the decline, since 2019 are to total 70m, down from 77m in 2018, the result of lower sales of devices such as current-generation consoles and surveillance systems. And in case you want a bright spot in HDDs, Nidec points out external HDDs and nearline datacentres HDDs. External HDDs are predicted to remain flat in 2019 at 100m units, while datacentre drives are to increase to 54m. However enterprise-class HDDs are also on the decline as customers are migrating mission-critical applications to SSDs.
Nidec expects to retain near-total control of the HDD spindle motor market going forward, and as such its analysis of the industry is well worth going through.
