HDD Sales Won't Fall On-Year in 2011

While some IT market segments are falling and the course of others remains undecided, others don't seem poised to see any sort of changes, or at least that's what those dealing with it seem to expect.

With all the talk about the holiday season and the period immediately afterwards, market watchers have been spreading rumors or making analyses of what one may expect.

DRAM contract prices, for instance, are still falling and will keep doing so until they reach a so-called proverbial bottom in the first quarter of 2011.

Things are more or less uncertain on the notebook market as well, although suppliers are mostly optimistic about what January will bring.

Now, yet another report made by Digitimes supplied some information, though not much of it, on what can be expected of the HDD market.

Hard disk drives have gone though a sort of evolution of their won, even as their position has begun to be challenged by SSDs (solid state drives).

So far, notebook demand has begun to rise in emerging markets, and demand from the US and Europe has, thus, become less important in determining the ratio between the first and second halves of 2010. Basically, the ratio is now switching from 4:6 to 5.5.

When it comes to 2011, the same report implies that shipments will stay mostly flat, at least for the first quarter compared to Q4 of 2010.

As for the whole year of 2011, the shipment ratio between the first and second halves should remain 5.5, as the one during the ongoing year is set to turn out.

What remains to be seen is how platter-based storage solutions keep faring against the cheapening solid state drives and if the latter do not somehow start to more quickly approach the mainstream market.

Regardless, the main impression given by 2011 is that the HDD market will perform at least decently, if not well.