Yet more evidence that flash is the future has arrived by way of Nidec Corp., a Japanese spinning disk electric motor manufacturer, which says that disk drive shipments will fall by 3.7 percent between 2013 and 2020.

The hit will be felt most of all in the data center, with enterprise-related shipments set to slump by 17.6 percent during that time, compared to an 8.1 percent slump in PC hard drives. However, there is a bright spot in what Nidec calls “high-capacity data centre drive shipments”, which it expects will grow at a CAGR of 16.2 percent, The Register reported.

The only good news for hard drive makers is that capacity-per-drive is expected to increase, which should at least help to preserve prices. But that doesn’t do anything to disguise the fact the disk drive industry seems to be heading in a downward spiral, with fewer drives being produced and more expensive manufacturing processes driving up costs. Throw in Wikibon’s prediction that flash will become more affordable than magnetic disk for the majority of IT applications by the end of 2016, and it’s clear the industry is in less-than-rosy health.

Nidec blames the decline on the rise of smartphones and tablets, which is rapidly forcing sales of PCs down the toilet. It also points to flash’s rise in popularity as the medium of choice for storing data that needs to be accessed quickly – and disk isn’t helped here by the fact that flash has already surpassed magnetic disk as the most cost-effective medium for performance-driven applications, according to Wikibon’s CTO & Co-founder David Floyer.

Interestingly, Nidec says that high-capacity and relatively slow-access data centre drives are likely to be the least affected by the shift to flash storage, but given the overall cost advantage and benefits of an “all-flash” data center, it’s hard to share the company’s optimism.

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