The component shortage that affects RAM memory for the consumer market, professionals and SMEs, and its consequent stratospheric rise in Price, can also be transferred to hard drives in a short timejudging by the news coming from Western Digitalwhich It has already committed all its manufacturing capacity for 2026. According to its CEO, Irving Tan, the company already has all its HDD unit production planned for this year thanks to agreements signed with its seven main clients.
Not only that, but also, as the manager pointed out in the presentation of his results for the second quarter of his fiscal year, they have already reached agreements with two of these clients for the supply of HDD units that they demand for 2027, and with one of them also for 2028.
The CEO of Western Digital has commented that these long-term agreements combine the volume of exabytes committed and the price. But he has also confirmed that the company has focused on developing products that meet the needs of business customers. And not exactly from SMEs, but from large companies, dedicated above all to AI and the development of data centers.
To reach this conclusion about the company’s orientation regarding the manufacturing of hard drives, you only have to analyze the results presented by the company. They show that Western Digital’s revenue from cloud services accounts for 89% of its total revenue, while the revenue achieved in the consumer market was only 5%.
Because of this inequality in Western Digital’s figures, it is normal for the company to focus on business demand and stop paying attention to the consumer sector, something that other companies have already begun to do and that has led, among other measures, to the closure of Crucial.
Due to the shortage of hard drives for the consumer and small business sector, as well as the more than likely increase in demand for this type of discs in the short and medium term as a consequence of rate of expansion of hyperscalarsit is more than likely that the price of hard drives is going to experience an increase as significant as the one that memory is already suffering, which is also extending to SSD units. A trend that, at least in the short term, does not seem to be reversing.
