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The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has boosted demand for solid state drives (SSD) and hard disk drives (HDD), setting up their growth trajectory until at least 2025.
According to analyst firm IDC, worldwide SSD capacity shipments are anticipated to grow by a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 33.0 per cent over a five-year period, while global HDD industry petabyte shipments are expected to jump up 18.5 per cent over the same period.
In fact, SSD unit shipments are expected to grow by a CAGR of 7.8 per cent over a five-year period, while worldwide revenue for the market is forecast to grow during the period by 8.2 per cent, reaching US$51.5 billion by the end of 2025.
The growth comes despite extra constraints in the supply market caused by the coronavirus pandemic, the report claimed. Indeed, remote working and education, the same drivers behind last year's PC surge, are also playing a key role in HDD and SSD growth.
However, the SSD market will also see the enterprise market play a part in its growth, with companies investing in cloud and traditional IT to support business operations.
"The pandemic has accelerated the need for transformation, and worldwide demand for SSDs has increased because of this trend as both consumers and businesses have looked to take advantage of the technologies' benefits," said Jeff Janukowicz, research vice president of SSDs and enabling technologies at IDC.
"IDC believes that most of the long-term trends remain intact, enabling broader SSD adoption over the forecast period, and worldwide SSD units and capacity shipped are higher than the prior forecast thanks to increasing demand from client devices, enterprise storage customers, and cloud service providers."
Pricing for SSDs is also expected to be volatile in the near future with vendors expected to match supply with higher demand and advancements in NAND flash to lead to more cost-effective solutions.
For HDDs, demand from cloud service providers and hyperscale data centre customers is expected to be strong, while HDD petabyte demand will be solid and the market for video surveillance-class HDDs is predicted to remain “on track”.
"While the client HDD market continues a long-term secular decline due to rising SSD attach rates, the COVID-19 pandemic has over the near term increased the demand for certain types of HDDs, particularly mobile HDDs as well as capacity-optimised HDDs," said Edward Burns, research director of HDD and storage technologies at IDC.
"And the demand for storage capacity continues to grow at a steady pace as the world creates and stores more and more data."
