Hard disk drive shipments unaffected by success of tablets
1 min read
The dominance of hard disk drives in the storage industry looks set to continue for the next three years, unaffected by the boom in media tablets, according to IHS iSuppli.
The market analyst forecasts shipments of HDDs, such as laptops and netbooks, to reach 235million units in 2011 – up 15.2% on 2010. In comparison, it projects shipments of tablets will rise to 63million in 2011 – an increase of 270.6%, but is still not encroaching on the space owned by HDDs in the storage industry. According to IHS, the gap in shipments between the two sectors won't narrow until 2014, but HDDS will still outnumber tablets by nearly a factor of two.
The figures for mobile pc shipments are a subset of the larger universe of mobile HDDs that includes numbers for HDD replacements and spare units. IHS forecasts mobile HDD figures to reach 274million units in 2010 and surpass 300million in 2011.
The analyst says the figures reveal the continuing strength of HDDs as a storage medium, despite the popularity of tablets.
