Report: HDD market benefits from digital video applications

The hard disk drive (HDD) market will keep growing over the next few years due to the ever-burgeoning demand for storage from computer users, game enthusiasts and TV entertainment watchers, according to In-Stat.

The research firm said in a new study that some 1 billion HDDs will be shipped in 2014.

"As video has gone digital, demand for storage is found in consumer applications including set top boxes (STBs), external drives, automotive applications, personal media players, camcorders, home servers, and video cameras," said Norm Bogen, VP, Digital Entertainment. "STBs have been an HDD application target since TiVo pioneered TV recordings and playback and 'Time Shifting.' The 3.5" HDDs at 7200rpm and with capacities starting from 500GBs to 2TBs are being offered in this DVR application market. Among consumer applications, external HDDs are the second largest segment behind DVRs, and will double in unit volume between 2010 and 2015."

The In-Stat report also indicates that Hitachi, Samsung, Seagate, Toshiba and Western Digital are the top manufacturers of HDDs, with Western Digital leapfrogging Seagate as the largest HDD manufacturer for the first half of 2010. Other findings include: more HDDs are sold than solid-state drives due to cost and drive capacities are growing by 40 percent each year.

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