The
drastic fall-off in PC shipments as demand switches to tablets isn't just affecting the prospects for Kryder's law reducing storage media costs, even for 2.5" drives:
PC sales are in terminal decline thanks to the continued popularity
of tablets and there’s nothing an anticipated surge in ultramobiles can
do to stop it.
...
Gartner has estimated that this year will see 2.4 billion devices
shipped – that’s PCs, tablets and mobile phones combined – growing nine
per cent over 2012.
...
The number of PCs sold in 2013 will fall 7.6 per cent compared to
2012, to 315 million units, with the only bright spot being
ultramobiles, which will increase 140 per cent to 23 million units.
Tablet shipments will surge 69 per cent to 197 million units, while
smartphones will make up an ever-increasing slice of the mobile phone
pie. Of the 1.875 billion mobile phones Gartner predicts will be sold in
2013, a whopping 1 billion units are predicted to be smartphones,
compared with 675 million units in 2012 (out of 1.746 billion).
It is affecting the
prospects for Moore's law reducing the costs of the servers that drive them:
But with memory prices stabilizing after years of double-digit drops, analysts said that DDR3 DRAM will
likely have a longer-than-expected life, which could delay the wide
adoption of DDR4 in computers. DRAM prices have stabilized as demand for
DDR3 has exceeded supply, and the number of memory makers has also
dwindled. ...
The volume shipments of PCs
and servers are not enough to justify an early switch to DDR4, analysts
said. Also, a lot of focus is now on the fast-growing tablet and
smartphone markets, so manufacturers are shifting capacity to LPDDR3 and
other forms of mobile memory and storage.
The collapse in PC sales hits Seagate's bottom line just like WD's.
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