14 DAY TRIAL // Even though one would expect the HDD market to have more problems this year, what with the higher prices and all, IDC believes that the opposite will occur.
Not that makers of such storage devices haven't had to go through trying times of course, but the analyst firm still thinks the overall shipment levels for the year will rise.
The estimated percentage is 7.7%, although, true enough, it won't be owed to consumer interest as much as it will be to the two natural disasters of 2011.
Because of the massive earthquake in Japan (March, 2011) and the floods in Thailand (fourth quarter), shipments dropped by 4.5% last year.
As such, even though overall HDD prices are high (and will stay that way even after the April drop), analysts are optimistic, from this one perspective.
Meanwhile, HDD vendors will use this whole mess as a chance to reset the standard price after the so-called “erosion” that began in 2009.
"In many respects, the hard disk drive industry has collectively hit the 'reset' button. A reset of the HDD industry structure should allow for the remaining HDD industry participants to slowly reduce HDD prices from current levels at a rate that still delivers value to customers, while at the same time ensuring sufficient funding is available to develop new HDD technologies that are needed to improve HDD capacity, performance, reliability, power consumption, and security," said John Rydning, research vice president, Hard Disk Drives at IDC.
"Still, long-term revenue growth will only be realized if the remaining participants transform into storage device and storage solution suppliers with a broad range of products for a wide variety of markets."
Cleanup and repairs to the flooded factory buildings will be done in the first half of 2012, which means that pre-flood supply levels of components and complete units won't return before the third quarter of this year.