The number of shipped harddrives dropped by 4% in Q2 2010 from the first quarter. This could be interpreted as a sign for dropping PC sales in Q2 and possibly Q3.
The numbers are still considerably better than last year, up 23 % from 2009, but last year was a very tough period and not the best comparison. Overall the sales of harddrives is expected to increase by 22% in 2010, to 680 million units.
As predicted the sales of mobile harddrives are expected to surpass dsektop drives. This will benefit Western Digital more than main contender Seagate as it has a much stronger hold on the mobile segment.
“Looking further down the supply chain, hard drive shipments in the second quarter of 2010 were down 4% sequentially but up 23% from the second quarter of 2009. There were several factors in the drop: weakness in Europe, destocking by PC customers, and a shift in ordering patterns by PC vendors as they took advantage of lower cost sea versus air freight,” commented Robert Castellano, VP, The Information Network
The sloping sales of harddrives are partly due to slower PC sales, but also factors like SSD technology and other flash based storage may be starting to affect sales. The prices of harddrives are continuing to drop where you can easily find drives at less than 10 cents per Gigabyte.
