Seems like the storage sector has managed to overcome the difficulties that they encountered a year after devastating floods hit their manufacturing facilities in Thailand. IHS iSuppli is saying that global hard disk drive (HDD) industry has fully recovered, with shipments to the computer market expected to hit a record level this year, driven by consumer demand by the upcoming Windows 8 OS launch and the enterprise market. Just how much HDDs are the manufacturers looking to sell? Well, IHS iSupply predicts that they will be shipping 524.0 million units at the close of 2012, which is up 4.3 percent from 502.5 million units last year. “HDD shipments for computers will overcome a sluggish third quarter to reach record levels in 2012,” said Fang Zhang, analyst for storage systems at IHS. “The yearly rise in HDD shipments is the result of greater demand from the consumer and enterprise PC segments, both of which continue to clamor for disk space in order to hold storage-intensive media like music, videos and other forms of social media content. As downloadable media content becomes more readily accessible and affordable, so will the quest for storage space continue in order to satisfy unremitting demand. Meanwhile, the HDD industry has completely resolved disruptions to its HDD manufacturing and component supply caused by the Thailand disaster that struck one year ago.”
Source: IHS iSuppli