Summary
* A recovery in the consumer electronics market is expected by 2011 * By 2014 expected content stored in the average US home is estimated at 12 TB * Roughly half of this 12 TB is backups and user generated content * Some consumer storage categories will experience growth even in recessionary times, such as external storage * 900 Exabytes of storage capacity for consumer applications is expected to be shipped in 2014
Analysis
Consumer electronics has been hit by current economic trends like other businesses. Despite the general hit in consumer electronics there are some types of consumer electronics digital stoage that are experiencing growth. The demand for digital storage is very elastic and if people can buy more digital storage and products that use digital storage they will.
For this reason we expect that digital storage in consumer electronics will experience significant growth. Based upon a survey of consumers average digital storage in the average US home should reach 12 Terabytes by 2014 and total digital storage shipped for consumer applications should reach 900 Exabytes by the same year.
One of these growth areas is external storage devices. This growth in external storage, while less in 2009 than in 2008, is driven partially by the desire of many consumers to extend the life of their current computers by purchasing inexpensive external storage rather than spending more on a new computer with a larger storage capacity.
Other drivers for the growth of external storage in the home include backup and DVR extenders. Small form factor external storage is experiencing the fastest growth and in general 2.5-inch and smaller hard disk drives will exceed 3.5-inch drive volumes for the first time in 2009.
Optical disk drive sales are believed to have peaked in 2007 but the conversion to higher resolution HD content should allow this inexpensive storage media to play a continued role. Hard disk drives will play a significant role on static consumer electronic applications that require reading and writing of information such as DVRs, media servers and home backup. Flash memory will continue to dominate in mobile applications and content capture although there are some markets where the larger storage capacity available with inexpensive small form factor hard disk drives will be attractive. There are interesting combinations and interactions between the different storage devices that help to drive the market for each of them.
This data was extracted by a report by Tom Coughlin and Jim Handy called Digital Storage in Consumer Electronics (available at www.tomcoughlin.com/techpapers.htm). This 150-page study details storage in consumer electronics giving details on important market drivers and analyzing cost history and market projections. A full 73 figures and 39 tables cover the consumer electronics storage market in great detail. For each of the thirteen key mobile and static consumer applications covered in the report, a forecast projects hard disk drive, flash memory and optical disk drive consumption through 2014. A significant section is devoted to external storage and remote storage trends for consumer and small business users.
