This year will be bad for the IT industry, with a drop in sales, but not as bad as 2022. Estimates indicate that 2023 will be the last drop in sales and by 2024 we will see a recovery in the market. A Yole Group study refutes this, stating that 2023 will be the year of SSD inventory cleanup and for 2028there sale of these storage units go up 35%.
To reiterate something we commented on in previous articles: this is due to the COVID-19 pandemic. After a strong renewal of systems due to telework, we are now in a process of normal decline in sales. But this period ends this year, for next year the positive data should return.
Good growth for the next few years
The truth is that the study carried out by the Yole group shows some interesting data. The first information he gives us is that in 2021 more than 400 million SSDs were sold, but in 2022 the figure fell to 352 million units.
Unit sales for the past year are broken down. Of the 352 million unitsof which 55 million was for servers, data centers and others, of which 30 million were M.2 PCIe SSDs. Respect to indoor market (or GP) have been sold 297 million units, of which 252 million were M.2 PCIe SSDs. We clearly see that SATA drives have lost a lot of strength in the market.
This study makes a prediction of 472 million SSDs sold, which is a 35% increase compared to 2022. The professional SSD market is estimated to achieve total sales of 111 million units, of which 79 million will be M.2 PCIe SSDs. Regarding the domestic market, 361 million units sold are expected, of which 347 million will be M.2 PCIe SSDs.
There are more interesting facts, such as the version of the PCIe interface that these SSDs will use in 2028. For the server market, it is estimated that the 69% of SSDs sold will be PCIe 5.0During this time he 16% will be PCIe 6.0. The number on the market home user is very different since the 12% SSDs sold will be PCIe 5.0 and only the 3% will be PCIe 6.0.
The data shows a PCIe 5.0 interface total failuresomething predictable. These units are presented as very expensive and problematic in terms of temperatures. Most of those seen have a fan, due to thermal issues.
Who are the biggest SSD vendors?
Maybe this data doesn’t seem quite interesting to you, but it gives us a lot of information. The report reveals who divides the SSD market into two major groups: memory makers that produce their own SSDs and SSD makers that rely on third-party memory.
Samsung, Kioxia (formerly Toshiba), Western Digital, Micron (under the Crucial brand), SK Hynix and SOLIDGIM manufacture their own memory and SSD. All these companies represent 82% of SSDs sold in 2022, a brutal figure. While Kingston, Corsair, ADATA, Seagate and other SSD makers that rely on memory chips from the first-mentioned companies accounted for 18% of units sold in 2022.
The data is truly spectacular and very relevant. We see that the SSD market depends on a very small number of companies that manufacture memory chips. In concrete terms, we are talking about five companies, since SOLIDGIM is a recently created subsidiary of SK Hynix. This assumes an oligopoly of firms that can agree on prices, which is suspected to have happened in the past.
