[Hardware] Client SSDs: Samsung Retains No.1 Spot, SSDs Outsell HDDs by 2.6x

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Client SSDs: Samsung Retains No.1 Spot, SSDs Outsell HDDs by 2.6x

 

 

Shipments of solid-state drives in the second quarter of 2021 remained almost flat, due in part to a slight sequential decline in PC shipments in Q1 and to ever looming shadow of component shortages. Unit wise, SSDs outsold hard drives by 47% as most client systems now use solid-state storage, but HDDs lead in terms of capacity by 411% as they are used to store the majority of data generated today. Samsung remained the world's largest supplier of SSDs followed by Western Digital, and Kioxia.

99.6 Million SSDs Shipped in Q2
The industry shipped 99.6 million SSDs in Q2 2021, up slightly from 99.438 million drives in Q1, according to Trendfocus (via StorageNewsletter). These drives can store 68.63EB (exabytes) of data, up 10.7% from 62EB in the first quarter. By contrast, three makers of HDDs shipped 67.6 million hard drives with a capacity of 350.7EB.  

Avid readers know that while SSDs lead in terms of unit shipments these days, HDDs lead in terms of capacity as they are used for bulk storage in hyperscale datacenters operated by companies like AWS, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft.

 

M.2 modules are cheaper to make than drive form-factor (DFF) SSDs, which is why they are cheaper and therefore more po[CENSORED]r than 2.5-inch solutions. It is a bit surprising that DFF devices feature a higher average capacity than M.2 drives, but perhaps people are buying more high-capacity 2.5-inch SSDs to upgrade their old PCs and this causes such an effect. In any case, 500/512GB SSDs are now considered average, so while manufacturers still sell many 250/256GB drives, higher-capacity models are gaining traction.  

It is noteworthy that while client SSDs outshipped client hard drives by 2.6 times as far as units are concerned in Q2 2021, the average capacity of a client HDD is over 5 times higher compared to that of a client SSD.

12.74 Million Enterprise SSDs
Enterprise-grade SSDs are sold in lower quantities than client drives, around 12.74 million units were sold in Q2 2021. But these SSDs feature considerably higher capacities and prices, so manufacturers prioritize their production over client SSDs. 

During the quarter both SATA and PCIe enterprise drives demonstrated rather impressive sequential shipments growth with 5.79 million and 5.84 million units sold, respectively.