Demand for storage products surges in China

Western Digital, the world’s biggest data storage company, expects rapid recovery in the Chinese market with surging demand in the cloud, artificial intelligence and digital entrainment sectors, it said on Monday.

The company, which launched new enterprise storage products in Shanghai, recently secured a deal with Tencent’s cloud services. Its products are widely used in sectors requiring accessing and processing data frequently, such as data analysis and cloud storage services.

In 2019, 45 zettabytes or ZB data were created and the figure is going to triple to 143 ZB in 2024. Zettabyte is approximately equal to a thousand Exabytes or EB, a billion Terabytes or TB and a trillion gigabytes or GB. More than 25 percent of data, regarded as “engine of digital economy,” will be created from China in 2024, Western Digital said, citing figures from researcher IDC.  

During the pandemic, demand for online activities such as health and digital entertainment surged. China is leading the recovery for market and sales globally, said Steven Craig, Western Digital’s senior vice president.

In the first half, enterprise-used SSD or solid state disks are urgently needed, which has boosted prices and sales in the market, said researcher TrendForce.