IHS iSuppli, technology industry market research firm, predicts double-digit drops in the sales of conventional hard disk drives (HDDs) in 2013. The culprit? the increase in mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets, for computing. These slim, lightweight devices rely on solid state drives (SSDs) over larger, conventional hard disk drives. 

Hard Disk Drive Sales by the Numbers

The IHS iSuppli report says that hard drive market revenue will drop 11.8 percent in 2013. The market is by nowhere means “small,” though, and we shouldn’t expect the death of the HDD quite yet. The 2012 fiscal year had HDD revenues of $37.1 billion; that could drop to $32.7 billion this year, and, even further, down to $32 billion in 2014. 

Death of the Hard Disk Drive?

The HDD isn’t going anywhere yet; hard disk drives still represent the least expensive form of storage per gigabyte. This generation of notebook and laptop computers often use a hybrid disk drive, or pair a conventional HDD with an SSD to balance cost efficiency with the energy efficiency, added durability and performance offered by solid state drives. 

The growth of cloud data storage systems, big data server farms, and larger-than-ever RAID and virtual servers are also helping to keep the hard disk drive market stable. SSDs are still cost-prohibitive for such data-intensive applications. 

The iSuppli report, however, says we won’t be seeing a lot in the way of external hard disk drives in the future. Cloud storage and internet-based back-up solutions could make conventional external hard disk drives all but obsolete by the end of the decade. 

Will Hard Disk Prices Drop? 

The study noted that hard disk drive prices could slip by as much as 7 percent in 2013 as consumer demand drops. But manufacturers are forced to stay on the cutting edge of developing new, better storage devices, and may inflate prices to pay for those research & development efforts. 

Hard Disk Recovery: Still Important

As conventional hard disk drives near the end of their life cycles, they might be replaced by solid state drives. But the data on hard disk drives still needs to be recovered. Businesses and individuals store thousands, or even millions, of dollars worth of data on hard disk drives and RAID servers. Hard disk drives are easily replaceable, but that data is not. 

The industry will need professional hard disk data recovery experts well into the next decade. 24 Hour Data stays top of all HDD developments in order to bring our customers the latest hard disk data recovery techniques and an industry-high 99 percent success rate when it comes to hard disk data recovery.