Raw storage in 2021 reaches 3.6ZB capacity, $182B spending, 1B shipments

The raw storage market is made up of three offerings – NAND and DRAM (both solid state storage), Hard Disk Drives (HDDs). 2021 was a year of tremendous growth in capacity – up 18% to 3.6ZB (ZetaBytes) – and spending – up 19% to $182 billion. I included this area in my 2022 predictions, so I thought it would be a good idea to look at it in a bit more detail.
This is a very large global market with a handful of major suppliers producing vital components for storage systems, servers, client devices, smart phones, tablets and other hardware requiring local data storage and/or memory. The success of the market is based on constant break-thoughs in miniaturisation of wafer processes (for NAND and DRAM) and greater densities (for HDDs). The manufactured products are often delivered into a supply chain that includes integrators, finished goods assemblers, storage systems designs and channel partners.
The total annual shipped capacity of these devices in 2021 was 70 times greater than it was in 2003 (see my Figure above, where I show the three different offerings on a logarithmic scale due to the huge differences in the total). HDDs grew in capacity by 18%, although shipments dropped by 7% from 591 to 548 million. NAND capacity grew by 15% to 22.4EB (Exabytes) in the year with spending up 16% to $44 billion. Shipped DRAM capacity was actually down 13% in 2021 (having grown massively in 2019) to 7.2EB, although spending was up 20% to $104 billion – reflecting scarcities of the product at a time of supply-chain challenges.

My Figure above shows the annual spending on each of the three product types from 2003 to 2021. The most notable movements are:

• The downturn in 2008-2009 caused by the Credit Crunch,
• The point at which DRAM overtook HDDs in 2013,
• The strong growth from 2013 in SSD (DRAM and NAND) as new form factors came to market,
• A strong collapse of the DRAM market in 2019, partially as a result of US sanctions on Chinese IT vendors, and
• The up-tick in all three offerings during the pandemic from 2020 to 2021.

There will no doubt be future instability as a consequence of the war Russia has launched on Ukraine and certainly if China increases its unfriendly approach to some of its neighbours.
2021 market shares for all raw storage and each of the three offerings is shown in my Figure above. There are four major suppliers:

• SK Hynix – a South Korean company which started business in 1983. It manufactures NAND and DRAM.
• Micron – a US company started by 4 people in 1978. Also a manufacturer of NAND and DRAM.
• Samsung – is a South Korean company founded in 1938. It also makes NAND and DRAM components, but has an overall business which is wide including smart phones, tablets, TVs and household appliances.
• Western Digital – is a US company founded (as General Digital) in 1970. It is a long term player in the HDD market, but now has a healthy SSD (NAND) business.

With spiralling costs and long lead times to set up fabrication plants and significant vendor consolidation over the years, we are locked into these manufacturers, which can prove difficult at times. The devastating floods in Thailand in 2011 affected the world’s supply of HDDs.

I show the manufacturing locations for raw storage offerings in my Figure above, colouring the major suppliers by their nationality – US ones yellow and Asia/Pacific ones green (thanks Wikipedia for the source info!). I need no colour for suppliers from EMEA, because there are none. China, the USA, Japan and South Korea are the main manufacturing centers for these products today. American suppliers have been most expansive internationally and Japanese ones least.