Total HDD shipments in C3Q 2023 were down 8.2% compared with C2Q 2023 . This continues the downward trend since Q1 2022. Total exabytes shipped in C3Q 2023 were up about 0.61% from C2Q 2023. Total estimated HDD revenues in C3Q 2023 were down about 7% compared to the prior quarter.
Seagate said their HDD revenue was $1.295 B in the quarter with Mass Capacity HDDs accounting for 79% of this revenue. 71% of the company’s product was sold directly to OEMs. Total storage capacity shipped was 89.6EB with 79.2EB for Mass Capacity and 56TB for Nearline HDDs, the balance of 10.4EB was shipped for legacy applications. The average HDD capacity was 7.5TB with Mass Capacity average capacity at 10.3TB and legacy average capacity at 2.5TB.
Western Digital reported that their C3Q 2023 total HDD EB shipments declined by 5% from the prior quarter and that they had shipped 61.5EB of nearline storage. They also said that shipped 2.6M client compute units, consumer shipped units were 2.5M and data center were 5.3M. That means the average capacity of their nearline HDDs was about 11.6TB. The company’s ASP was $112 . Total HDD revenue was $1.194B. Cloud storage was about 32% of the company’s revenue in this quarter .
An important development in the HDD industry this quarter that will have a material effect on the industry going forward, particularly on the first increase in product areal density in a long time due to the introduction of heat assisted magnetic HDDs. In particular, David Mosley of Seagate said that, “Qualification and revenue ramp plans for our 30-plus terabyte products remain fully on track with high-volume ramp starting early in calendar 2024.