Nearline Enterprise HDD Shipments Plunged 21% Q/Q in 2Q23 to 9 Million

Analysts from Trendfocus, Inc. published on August 27, 2023, a report: ICloud, Hyperscale, & Enterprise Storage Service CQ3’23 Mid-Quarter Update I. Here is an abstract of this document of 15 pages:

Sharply Lower Cloud Purchases Cut Nearline, eSSD Exabyte Shipments in 2CQ23
2023 to mark significant capacity shipment contraction with recovery starting in 2H24

2CQ23 Nearline Enterprise HDDs
• Shipments plunged 21% Q/Q to 9.07 million while capacity shipped plummeted 30% over the same period to 125.50EB as cloud companies slashed purchases of high-capacity models.
• As a result of the hyperscale cutbacks, sequential volumes of >=18TB HDDs were nearly cut in half, falling 46% Q/Q to 3.88 million or only 43% of total nearline HDDs.
• OEM/others nearline HDD shipments rose slightly with prior consumption of elevated inventories enabling modest purchase increases in 2CQ23.
• Cloud demand will remain suppressed through the remainder of 2023 while a broader nearline recovery is forecast to commence in 2H24.
• Nearline capacity shipments in 2023 are forecast to fall by one-third Y/Y to less than 600EB, resulting in a revised long-term forecast 5-year CAGR of 22%.