It's true, and we saw it last week, that last year has been a turning point and a historic milestone in the PC storage industry, because for the first time in history more SSDs than mechanical hard drives have been sold. This is a representative fact, and more taking into account that the mechanical disk has not stopped losing market share in the last five years and, in fact, the tendency is that less and less of these are sold in favor of SSDs.
The traditional mechanical disk will gradually disappear from the PC
Actually, it is true that the conception of users when mounting a PC is that most do not even consider buying a mechanical disk, since with a 512 GB SSD or 1 TB capacity they already have a good combination of capacity and performance. According to Context, in the fourth quarter of 2019 93.3% of laptops sold in Western Europe carried SSD and not mechanical disk.
This trend is not only found in laptops, because the SSD adoption rate on desktop computers is also increasing. According to statistics, the fastest adoption rate is found in northern Europe and the Netherlands, where at the end of last year only 2% of OEM computers sold had mechanical hard drives. In Germany, only 6% of PCs still use a mechanical disk, while in the United Kingdom there are still 9.9% of the equipment. The lowest percentage of adoption is in southern Europe, and yet it is 85% in favor of the SSD.
What is clear is that the trend is that fewer and fewer people use mechanical discs in their equipment, and if many OEM PC and laptop manufacturers still include them, it is because they have long-term contracts with the hard disk manufacturers that force them to continue incorporating them. on their machines That's why Japan's hard drive association has already predicted that by the end of 2021 there will no longer be any OEM PC or laptop manufacturer that still uses mechanical hard drives in their teams.
No, the mechanical disk will not disappear completely
That manufacturers stop selling their OEM equipment with mechanical disc does not mean that this industry will go bankrupt, far from it. In fact, manufacturers continue to strive to improve the characteristics of hard drives, especially capacity and reliability. Mechanical disks are still necessary in many business environments, as well as in domestic ones such as for NAS systems, so we can still keep buying them for many years.
Of course, with the downward trend of the market, what could be affected is the price. According to published data, 320 million hard drives were sent in 2019, 15.6% less than the previous year, and this has been the case for the last 5 years, always going down with two-figure magnitudes.
If they also foresee that the "final hit" will take place next year, it is likely that manufacturers will go by the tangent and adopt the strategy of raise prices. You know, "If I sell less, I sell more expensive to earn the same." In any case, the trend of SSDs is contrary, as we are increasingly finding greater capacities and at better prices, so it will not be too worrying, at least in the short and medium term.
