Tablet growth affecting HDD sales

While the surge in tablets continues to affect PC shipments, another industry may be feeling an impact. According to reports, the market for hard disk drives is also feeling the pressure from tablet computers.

"While notebook PCs seem to be the first victim of the 'tablet phenomena,' the increasing adoption of tablets is also beginning to affect other IT businesses like the HDD market," a recent report from Forbes explains.

If major HDD vendors do not adapt and expand their line of storage hardware products, they will soon face issues stemming from massive popularity of tablets. According to a report by IHS Suppli, the market for solid-state NAND flash drives are expected to increase by 400 percent in 2011, due to the rapid adoption of tablets.

In turn, this will lead to a decline in HDD products, with revenue reaching $28 billion in 2011, increasing only 4 percent from 2011. A further decline is expected as more people and companies adopt tablets for personal and business use.

Despite being on the market for a brief period of time, tablet revenue is expected to go the opposite way of HDDs. According to RBC Capital Markets, tablet revenue is expected to reach $70 billion by 2014, increasing from the $11 billion in revenue in 2010.