Hard drive prices could go up significantly after the rumored ‘collapse’ of key player β paving the way for growing SSD domination in the storage market
Rumor has it that Resonac, a company that produces a crucial component of hard drives, is in the midst of a collapse, which could mean a serious disruption in the development and distribution of the best hard drives around the world.
After Chinese-language reports suggested that an unnamed HDD component supplier had undergone major layoffs in recent months and was on the verge of closing, some research was done by a sister site Tom’s hardware identified Resonac as the troubled supplier.
It could spell trouble for companies like Seagate and Western Digital, whose combined shipments fell 43% year over year from 2022 to 2023, according to data from Trendfocus, as reported by Tom’s Hardware.
What could Resonac’s rumored collapse mean?
The collapse of Resonance could have serious consequences for the rest of the industry. It is a Japanese company with 25,000 employees and one of the few companies that makes the drives that fit into HDDs. So it doesn’t necessarily fit the profile of the Taiwanese outfit first identified in Chinese-language reports.
Earlier this year we expected some of the largest hard drives on the market, including the Seagate 22TB HDD, to also be introduced. one of the cheapest large capacity hard drives there by the time Christmas hit.
This is an advantage over hard drive manufacturers such as Seagate and Western Digital, which are in a race against each other to produce and distribute massive hard drives up to 30 TB in size.
It was once widely expected that 2023 would be the year of 30TB HDDs. Both Seagate and Western Digital had been looking to reach the milestone this year. Another company in the industry, Showa Denko, also said so in 2022 This milestone is expected to be reached by the end of this year.
But that’s just the beginning: the same company suggested several years ago that its work on next-generation HAMR (Heat Assisted Magnetic Recording) hard drive media would allow it to produce 80TB hard drives. This is correct Seagate-supported research which has adjusted HAMR storage density even further to reach sizes up to 100 TB.
Nevertheless, with the price of the best SSDs continuing to drop, this could pave the way for the dominance of this alternative and much faster storage medium in the coming years β if the rumors are true and Resonac is indeed the company on the brink of the abyss is collapsing.
Even if the company isn’t Resonac, it’s worrying news that a major supplier of HDD components is on the verge of closing its doors, with subsequent supply chain disruptions hampering a market that’s already in a less than healthy position .