Guoxin Securities·2025-12-09 07:48Investment Rating - The report maintains an "Outperform" rating for the storage industry [2] Core Insights - The demand for storage is being driven by AI, with significant growth expected in the storage cycle due to AI training and inference needs [4] - The report highlights the dual oligopoly market structure in the HDD sector, primarily dominated by Seagate and Western Digital [59] - The global storage market is projected to experience a substantial increase in demand, particularly for DRAM and NAND, driven by AI applications [4] Summary by Sections 01 Storage Systems: Composition and Classification - AI storage systems are categorized into network storage (for cold data) and local storage (for hot and warm data) [4] - Storage can be divided into volatile memory (DRAM, HBM) and non-volatile storage (SSD, HDD) [4] 02 Market and Technology Trends: HDD, SSD, NAND, DRAM, HBM - HDD technology is advancing with HAMR (Heat-Assisted Magnetic Recording) to significantly increase single disk capacity [4] - SSDs are evolving with increasing NAND stacking layers and a shift from SLC to MLC and QLC architectures [4] - DRAM is seeing advancements with the development of DDR6, while HBM is primarily used in AI applications [4] 03 Demand Estimation: AI Training and Inference Driving Storage Demand Growth - AI inference is expected to create a demand for 23.0EB of DRAM and 593.5EB of NAND by 2026, indicating a short-term supply shortage and potential price increases [4] 04 Company Overview: Global Storage Companies' Business Focus - Samsung and SK Hynix are leading in DRAM, HBM, NAND, and SSD markets, while Micron, SanDisk, and Kioxia focus on NAND and SSD [4]