A drop in hard drive demand in the second quarter of 2010 could signal a slowdown in the rampant growth of the PC market in the second half of the year, according to The Information Network.
"The worldwide PC market was up 25% in the first half of 2010 over the same period in 2009," noted Robert Castellano, president of The Information Network. "Looking further down the supply chain, hard drive shipments in the second quarter of 2010 were down 4% sequentially but up 23% from the second quarter of 2009. There were several factors in the drop: weakness in Europe, destocking by PC customers, and a shift in ordering patterns by PC vendors as they took advantage of lower cost sea versus air freight."
Average hard drive prices decreased by 2% on average in the second quarter, and are expected to remain flat in the third quarter.
For the first quarter and the second quarter, Western Digital shipped more hard drives than Seagate, 800,000 more in the first and three million more in the second. In contrast with the overall hard drive market dropping 4% sequentially, Western Digital shipped 19.9 million mobile drives in the second quarter of 2010, compared to 16.9 million in the second quarter of 2009 and 19.8 million in the first quarter of 2010.
"In a May 13, 2010 release we stated that the mobile hard drive market, which is Western Digital's strength, will outperform the desktop PC market, which is Seagate's strength, in 2010. That's one of the factors in our forecast that Western Digital will move ahead of Seagate in 2010," added Castellano. "Shipments for the first half of 2010 further substantiate our forecast."
The hard drive market is on track to record a growth of 22% in shipments to 680 million units in 2010.
Article translated by Joseph Tsai
