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Technology shift: SSDs now have significantly higher market share than HDDs

A decisive technological change has taken place in the field of data storage media. The classic magnetic hard disks (HDDs) are now slowly dying out. They are passing the baton to the solid state drives (SSDs). Last year, 333 million SSDs were sold. HDDs are far behind the fast flash memory with a unit sales figure of just 260 million. But there is also a discipline in which HDDs are still far ahead of modern SSDs.

21 percent more sales of SSDs

According to the figures from the data storage experts at Trendfocus, SSDs are way ahead in terms of sales. According to the statistics, the fast storage media could record a proud 333 million sales in 2020. In percentage terms, this represents a growth of around 21 percent. Industry experts have already predicted this immense increase in sales in advance. But this does not only mean an increase in sales. On top of that, flash memories have taken a decisive step. The year 2020 is the first year in which more SSDs were shipped than HDDs. This has not only to do with the increase in sales of SSDs, but also with the decline in sales of HDDs. In fact, the old-fashioned magnetic hard disks were only able to ship 260 million HDDs, with a drop of 18 percent.

Storage space of SSDs behind that of HDDs

As solemn as the strong addition in shipments may be, the fast data carriers have to admit defeat to classic HDDs in one point. Flash storage may have collectively sold 50 percent more storage volume in 2020 than in 2019, but that still puts them far behind HDDs. In figures, manufacturers of SSDs sold just under 207.39 exabytes (for comprehension: one exabyte corresponds to 1 million terabytes). If you calculate the storage volume down to the number of units sold, SSDs are sold with an average of 623 GB of storage space.

Samsung will maintain its position as the SSD market leader in 2020

The situation is different for HDDs. Magnetic hard disks offer far more storage space with an average of just under 4 terabytes. If you add up the number of units sold in 2020, you get more than 1 zettabyte of sold storage space (for comprehension: 1 zettabyte corresponds to 1,000 exabytes). How does this immense size come about? The reason for this is probably the increasingly large servers of large companies, which for cost reasons still rely on classic HDDs for their data storage. Outside of the business sector, however, customers are increasingly turning to SSDs as a total solution. Thus, you can hardly find current notebooks or desktop PCs nowadays that have an HDD on board instead of an SSD.

Samsung is ahead

Once you take a look at the market shares among SSD manufacturers, the result is hardly surprising. According to Trendfocus statistics, Samsung was ahead in the fourth quarter of 2020. The Korean electronics group had a market share of 26.1 percent in terms of sold units. Looking at the sold storage space, the share is even higher at 32.8 percent. Samsung thus easily maintains its position as the undisputed market leader. Western Digital (WD) is in second place with 20.2% of the sold units and 15.4% of the sold storage space.

Simon Lüthje

I am co-founder of this blog and am very interested in everything that has to do with technology, but I also like to play games. I was born in Hamburg, but now I live in Bad Segeberg.

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