With the rapid growth of large-capacity SSD in storage market, will it replace HDD?

The shipment of SSD is steadily growing in global market. The shipment of SSD was 167.2million in 2018, while HHD was 379.2million. The shipment of SSD is expected to break 200million this year, while HDD is to 340.4million. So what is the trend of SSD and HDD shipments after 2020? What role will they play in each other?

SSD gradually dominates the market and the global storage capacity will be above 540million in 2023.

Firstly, let’s look at the trend of HDD and SSD shipments in the whole storage market from chart 1. The shipment of global HDD market was about 403.1million in 2017, while the shipment of SSD was about 121.8million. The total storage capacity was close to 524.9million.

Table 1: Trends in SSD and HDD shipments in the global storage market from 2017 to 2023.

We estimated that the shipment of HDD reduced to 379.2million in 2108, while the shipment of SSD increased to 167.2million. The total shipment was 546.4million, which increased by 4.1% compared with last year.
We estimate that the shipment of HDD will reduce to 340.4million in 2019, while the shipment of SSD is expected to increased to 204.1million. Which is the first time when the shipment of SSD surpass 200million. The total shipment is 544.5 million, which slightly falls compared with last year.

According to the application field, PC storage and enterprise storage market are the main application area.

From the trend of PC general shipment, the shipment of global market PC was 254.4million in 2017, which increased by 0.27% compared with last year. The shipment in 2018 was 254.6million, which increased by 0.08% compared with 2017. The shipments are similar with each other in a second consecutive year. It is estimated that the shipment of PC this year will be 257.5million increased by 1.1% compared with last year.

PC storage application mainly includes IA server, desk PC and laptop. The largest shipment is laptops approximately accounting for 60% of personal computer. The shipment of laptop in 2017 was 153.1 million increasing by 3.1% compared with last year. In 2018, the shipment increased by 2.3% to 156.6million. In 2019, the shipment is expected to 161.5million increasing by 3.1%. The total shipment of laptop is slightly increased in recent three years.

In 2017, the shipment of desk PC reduced 4.2% to 91.36million. The shipment in 2018 fell by 3.3% to 88.3million. It is estimated that the shipment in 2019 will drop by 2.3% to 86.3million. Although the drop is small, the reduction trend still continue.

IA server is the server with smallest shipment. The shipment of IA server in 2017 was 1920 thousand increasing by 1.6% compared with last year. In 2018, the shipment was about 9700 thousand falling by 2.1%. It is estimated that the shipment will be similar to the last year achieving to 9700 thousand in 2019.

The influence of PC storage varies greatly from 2017 to 2019.

There are three types of storage of PC itself, such as HDD, SSD and eMMC / UFS. In addition, it installs two or more types of storage, according to type. In this premise, let’s look at the storage load rate trend of IA Sever, Desk PC and laptop from 2017 to 2019 in chart 2.

In IA server, HDD loading rate rapidly fell and the installation rate of SSD greatly increased from 2017 to 2019. The installation rate of HDD was close to 90.2% in 2017, which is estimated to approximately reduce to 46.9%. The SSD loading rate was extremely low just only 9.6% in 2017. However, it rapidly increases to 53.1% in 2019 surpassing a half of IA server. In other words, SSD reverses HDD in the number of storage consolidated by IA server standard.

The loading rate of HDD in desk PC has fallen from 2017 to 2019 and the installation of SSD has gradually increased. However, SSD didn’t reverse HDD because of different IA servers. The installation of SSD, HDD and eMMC / UFS in 2017 are respectively 10.1%, 82.6% and 3.6%, which are expected to respectively become 53.3%, 34.8& and 11.8% in 2019.

Laptop has already had considerable SSD loading rate. In 2017, the loading rate of SSD was 39.2%, while the installation rate of HDD was 52.4%. HDD still dominated the market in 2017. It is estimated that the installation of SSD is going to increase to 57.6% surpassing a half. The installation rate of HDD is expected to be 39.2%, which account for one third of laptop.

Enterprises are bipolar for high performance SSD and high capacity HDD.

For enterprise storage market, SSD will generally continue to replace HDD and will dominate the market in the field of high performance storage. In the field of high capacity storage, Nearline storage will dominate the market.

From chart 3, we can know that the shipments of near line storage drive and enterprise performance hard disk in 2017 was respectively 42.4million and 22.59million. Enterprise had the smallest shipment of 15.97million. However, enterprise SSD had the highest sales volume about $7.178billion.
Near-line storage ranked second with sales of $6.734 billion, while enterprise high-performance hard drives at the end only $3.061 billion.  

In 2018, the shipment of enterprise SSD was 24.1million increasing by 50.9% compared with 15.97million of last quarter. Enterprise high-performance hard disk was 21.52 million falling by 4.7% compared with 22.57million of last quarter. Near-line storage drive increased by 23.9% to 52.52million. The shipment of enterprise SSD rapidly grew, which initially surpassed the shipment of enterprise high-performance hard disk.

It is estimated that the shipment of enterprise SSD in 2019 will be 29 million increasing by 20.3% compared with last year. The shipment of enterprise high-performance hard disk will be 19million falling by 11.7% compared with last year. Near-line storage is expected to be 54.6million increasing by 4% compared with last year.

Summary;

enterprise storage and PC storage market are the two main application fields of SSD and HDD. Combining the above two main application markets to predict the trend of HDD and SSD shipments, SSD market share will increase in the next few years. SSD will be dominant in the high-performance storage field, while the shipment of HDD will gradually reduce. The shipment of SSD will catch up with HDD in 2023. However, near-line storage drive will still dominate in the field of high capacity.

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