December 8, 2006
Year-End Excess Creates Buyers Market
As the year comes to an end; many OEMs have been cleaning up their books by clearing excess stock. By clearing excess stock, it has generated buying opportunities for storage consumers. SATA continues to define the market as it makes inroads across product segments, while holiday sales of external hard drives are causing some blips.
Desktop Market/IDE
Holiday sales continue to drive demand for high capacity drives by external drive manufacturers, creating a tight market for 250gb, 300gb, and 320gb capacities. Horizon expects to see demand and pricing to remain firm into the new-year for large capacity drives. Seagate’s recent announcement of a $20 price drop on the 400gb is an indication of a desire to hasten the markets acceptance of the newly introduced 400gb and 500gb capacities.
Low capacity drives of 20gb and 40gb are tough to find and Horizon expects prices to increase on these drives. Mid tier capacities of 80gb – 120gb are selling based on price with strong availability in the market place.
The introduction of motherboards that have the capability to accept both PATA and SATA hard drives is a signal that the market continues to transition to SATA drives. Expect SATA prices to fall as SATA becomes the dominant interface in the market.
Mobile Market
As market demand continues to increase for large capacity notebook drives of 100gb and larger, prices for 40gb, 60gb and 80gb continues to drop. The mobile SATA product has hit the market and is expected to have the same impact on the mobile market as it had on the desktop market. However, until the cost of the SATA compatible motherboard drops, PATA will be the interface of choice. Once the pricing comes down, consumers will purchase the higher performing drive.
The small form factor market of 1.8” drives has seen prices soften due to sub notebooks manufactures. The sub notebook manufacturers are releasing excess stock into the market to shore up their books for year end. However, demand from the repair market has absorbed some of this product preventing a price collapse. Horizon expects the price drop to be temporary, and expects pricing to stabilize come the New Year.
Enterprise/SCSI
Other than spot shortages for 300 GB capacities, market conditions continue to be very flat. With the year-end in sight, OEMs have released large quantities of excess creating a buyers market.
For availability and pricing contact: 949.595.8244 or visit www.horizontechnology.com
