The race to keep hard disk drives (HDDs) up to speed with applications' increasing storage demands has boosted both technological development on the one hand and the market on the other in 1997.
According to information technology and telecommunications market research specialists BMI-TechKnowledge's current Hard Disk Drive Market Report, total unit shipments are expected to increase more than 36% to reach 880 000 this year. This figure excludes HDDs brought to SA as part of an already assembled computer.
However, a decrease of 6,5% in average price will partly offset the revenue gained from higher shipments.
The desktop HDD market accounted for 92% of total unit shipments, but came under significant price pressure after the introduction of 5.25" drives. Although only one supplier is currently shipping 5.25" drives, BMI-T believes the sheer existence of the product has forced other suppliers to reduce prices of 3.5" products to compete. "Because the 5.25" drives cost less, their effect on the desktop market has been material, effectively enabling a new class of system," research analyst Loretta Pein writes in the report.
According to BMI-T, in high-end market segments, an increased level of supplier investment in capacity has led to a tactical imbalance. "The High-end will be one of the fastest-growing market segments, fuelled by the move to more enterprise-based storage to support the desire to keep larger data sets online."
The notebook HDD market constituted four percent of the total PC storage market.
"Mobile computing continues to stretch the boundaries of the Information Age, fuelled by continued advances in hardware performance and integration," Pein writes. "At the same time, the emergence of multimedia applications, network computing, the Internet and other forms of online communications have expanded the horizons of mobile computing."
As notebooks and ultra-portable computers become more powerful, more is being expected of them - and more is riding on the capacity, performance and reliability of their data storage.
"Today's mobile computing HDDs are being called upon to provide desktop capacity and performance, while packing more into less to fit the lightweight systems of next generation mobile computing devices. Meeting these diverse needs requires strategic thinking, advanced drive technology and quality manufacturing," Pein notes.
According to BMI-T, mobile drive supplier strategies will continue to diverge with a core set of suppliers continuing to focus on the traditional 2.5" marketplace and a few offering 3.0" drives.
The PC server HDD market accounted for four percent of the overall HDD market in unit terms.
"Today's servers are being called upon to distribute more information to more users than ever before. In addition, the data these servers must handle has grown increasingly complex as storage continues to play an ever-increasing role in information sensitive organisations."
Looking to the future, BMI-T expects the storage market to remain bouyant, with networks, the Internet and online facilities continuing to boost storage requirements.
However, storage will increasingly become a sub-system of computers, rather than part of the original system. Users will source their data from a third party and are therefore not tied to one vendor.
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