Xuan Gu Bao·2026-02-03 23:30Group 1 - The perception that HDDs are a seasonal and cyclical industry is outdated, with a current focus on supplying large-capacity HDDs to AI hyperscale cloud service providers, whose purchasing behavior is no longer influenced by seasonality or economic cycles [1] - By 2026, HDD production capacity has been fully booked, with contracts extending to 2027 and 2028, and discussions ongoing about potential extensions to 2028, 2029, and even inquiries for 2030 [1] - HDDs are the lowest-cost storage medium, and the AI boom has led to supply shortages, as AI servers consume significantly more storage than conventional servers, resulting in a surge in demand for nearline HDDs [1] Group 2 - The core advantages of HDDs include low unit storage costs, total cost of ownership (TCO), and physical storage performance, with a current price difference of 4-6 times compared to SSDs, making them a cost-effective choice for cloud computing vendors [2] - Future HDD applications will focus on large-scale data lakes and cold data archiving, with a projected market growth rate of approximately 15% over the next three years [2] - The HDD industry supply chain includes upstream components such as disks, heads, and controllers, with HDD manufacturing in the midstream and applications primarily in AI data lakes and cold data archiving in the downstream [2]