In recent weeks, the Chia cryptocurrency has been the protagonist of a lot of news, and much of it is pretty bad, like the shortage of hard drives in the Asian market, which has skyrocketed its prices, or the fact that the Chia extraction is prematurely “killing” many SSDs, consuming their TBWs within days of use. However, this also has its good part and is that it may be responsible for the resurrection of the hard drive market, which has been in sharp decline for several years which seems doomed to total decline.
Sales of hard drives by major manufacturers
There are currently three major hard drive manufacturers: Seagate, Western Digital, and Toshiba. In the first quarter of the year, Seagate
Together, 64.17 million hard drives were shipped in the last quarter, 8.4% less than in the previous period. It is clear that while the hard drive market is still far from disappearing, it has been in free fall for quite some time and every time the sales results are presented they are lower than in previous periods.
It has been a long time that we wonder if hard drives will disappear in favor of SSDs, faster, cheaper and with greater capacities, but we think that we are still far from it because in terms of price per GB of capacity Traditional hard drives continue to gain ground by a landslide and in addition, the three major manufacturers continue to push their technology a lot to improve more and more. However, that doesn’t mean the numbers are there to show the industry is in sharp decline.
Chia, the salvation of the hard drive market?
Now that the Chia cryptocurrency is already in the ‘market’, user interest in hard drives (as we mentioned earlier, especially larger capacity ones) has clearly increased, and in the Asian market , they are already the first to suffer the symptoms of scarcity that this has caused because no one expected such a sudden increase in interest.
Now this has caused a situation of shortage and price hikes, but there is no indication that manufacturers cannot meet demand and that means it won’t take long to see the shelves full again soon. arrival of new lots. HDDs . It is to be expected that if Chia’s situation continues these units will also be sold and more and more remittances will arrive with new hard drives ready to be sold (hopefully at their usual price and not excessively high). as we have already seen).
All of this means that hard drive manufacturers could potentially see sales increase by several integers this quarter, and while we won’t know the numbers for at least 3 months, hard drive shipments could increase for the first time. For a long time. , and all thanks to the Chia cryptocurrency.
