The harddrive industry is in an uncomfortable seat at the moment, mainly due to the introduction of flash-based storage. Even if the capacity and price of this kind of storage is way worse than that of mechanical harddrives. Mechanical drives have still been questioned, but according to TrendFocus the threat from the flash-based drives is exaggerated. About 2.5 billion harddrives will be shipped by 2011 and the industry is expected to grow to a value of $33 billion. This is very much thanks to the perpendicular recording technology, which makes it possible to fit more data on the same surface and at the same time reduce the manufacturing costs, which in turn is a trend that will continue. The harddrive market is strong and will be so during the five coming years and parts of this is due to the strong IT development of India and China.
“HDDs will remain the king of storage for years, despite the bluster from the flash community,/…/Storage capacities are rising 40% annually, while costs are coming down. Demand from both the personal computer market and the expanding base of HDD-enabled CE devices will support tremendous growth through the decade./…/Our research of the HDD and flash industries reveals that although there may be some common markets, the two technologies will not frequently clash. In fact, the HDD industry will probably be healthier financially” – Mark Geenen, President of TrendFocus
