After suffering a decline in 2009, global revenues from shipments of hard disk drives (HDDs) and optical disk drives (ODDs) used in computers is expected to grow in 2010 as PC shipments rise on the strength of the economic recovery, according to iSuppli. In 2009, computer-oriented HDD revenues declined by 11.7% while those of ODD decreased by 6.3%.

Worldwide revenues from shipments of HDDs used in computer applications are expected to amount to US$27.7 billion in 2010, up 18.4% from US$23.4 billion in 2009, iSuppli said. Meanwhile, computer-oriented ODD revenues will reach US$14.8 billion in 2010, a 7.6% rise from US$13.7 billion last year.

"The 2010 economic recovery will bring rising sales of PCs," said Fang Zhang, analyst for storage systems at iSuppli. "The notebook sector is expected to be particularly strong, with shipments outgrowing those of desktops. This will drive the robust increase in HDD shipments."

Other factors contributing to the rise in demand in 2010 include new server purchases and the migration to 2.5-inch HDDs in data centers to achieve cost reductions, according to iSuppli. Furthermore, the adoption of Microsoft's Windows 7 by the enterprise business segment is helping to propel PC sales. Shipments also are continuing to rise for external drives used for the storage of gaming, music and movies.

HDD revenues for computers are likely to decrease to US$6.6 billion in the first quarter of 2010 from US$6.7 billion in the fourth quarter of 2009, reflecting the normal seasonal slowdown, iSuppli expects. However, HDD revenues are set to recover to the fourth-quarter 2009 level by the second quarter of 2010.

The computer-oriented ODD market, on the other hand, will not recover to its fourth-quarter 2009 revenue level of US$4.1 billion during any single quarter of 2010. However, the market will grow on an annual basis in 2010, iSuppli noted.