By all accounts, the hard disk drive market should have suffered a serious revenue drop in 2012, due to the Thai flooding of the previous year when HDD and component factories were flooded.
Massive price increases prevented that from happening though.
Only now that prices have begun to erode again has the situation begun to make more sense.
According to market analyst firm iSuppli (IHS), the total HDD market revenue will go down 12% in 2013.
More precisely, the sum will be of around $32.7 billion / 24.18 billion Euro, which is 11.8% below the $37.1 billion / 27.43 billion Euro of last year.
In 2014, things will go a bit lower than even that, to $32 billion / 23.66 billion Euro.
“The HDD industry will face myriad challenges in 2013. Shipments for desktop PCs will slip this year, while notebook sales are under pressure as consumers continue to favor smartphones and tablets.†said Fang Zhang, analyst for storage systems at IHS.
