Nearly 70 years have passed since IBM introduced what many consider the world's first hard drive. Since then, the annual revenue generated by traditional hard drives has largely followed a predictable trajectory, albeit with some deviations.
Digital storage analyst Tom Coughlin and industry insider Tom Gardner recently produced a fascinating set of charts outlining the hard drive industry's revenue since the late 1950s. It draws on multiple data sources over the years, including more than 20 years of information provided by Montgomery Phister.
As you can see, hard disk industry revenue did not achieve breakthrough growth until the 1980s. During this decade, annual revenue grew from approximately $4 billion to more than $20 billion. The 1990s also saw some growth, but incomes were much less predictable and unstable.
Both Gartner and TrendFocus observed a decline in industry revenue during the first half of the 2000s, but the market stabilized and continued to grow by the middle of the decade, peaking at approximately $37 billion in 2012. Coughlin pointed out that this is likely related to the widespread flooding in Thailand the previous year, which caused hard drive prices to skyrocket in 2012.
According to Coughlin, the hard drive industry's shipments peaked in 2010 at 651 million units. In comparison, hard drive shipments in 2022 are only 172 million units, and shipments in 2023 are expected to be approximately 127 million units, with a total capacity of less than 900 ExaBytes.
Hard drive revenue has been on a downward trend since 2012 due to the rise of solid-state drives, but that trend may change this year, as Coughlin believes that increased demand for storage from artificial intelligence could drive hard drive revenue growth. Coughlin predicts that the industry will also ship 127 million spinning hard drives this year, which if true, would be the same as last year.