Global hard disc drive (HDD) shipments are expected to grow slightly by 3% in the third quarter, up from 165 million units in the second, while shipments in the fourth quarter are expected to stay flat on quarter or grow only slightly, according to sources from HDD players.

Affected by increasing demand for tablet PCs, which mostly use non-HDD storage devices, and weakening economies in Europe and the US, HDD orders from the OEM market, which accounts for the largest shipment proportion of the HDD market, are starting to weaken.

In addition to the third quarter, due to Japan's earthquake in March, notebook players, in the second quarter, placed large volumes of HDD orders to accumulate inventories for avoiding possible shortage in the future and such actions have created a large sequential comparative base for the shipments in the third quarter and causing shipments to grow only less than 5%.

Although products such as ultrabooks and Chromebooks that require smaller storage devices are expected to impact shipments of HDD players, but as cloud data storage solutions will start rising because of these mobile devices, HDD players' shipments to the enterprise market may turn strong and help cover the gap from the consumer market.