A major HDD component supplier in Taiwan has laid off many employees and is set to close, according to reports shared by the Economic Daily and Sanli News (Chinese language reports). Our research indicates the troubled supplier is known as Resonac, and is (was) a major producer of the thin films used on the surface of HDDs — check our HDD benchmarks hierarchy and best HDDs if you're looking for more storage capacity.
In September, 40 companies based at Hsinchu Science Park in Taiwan laid off 165 employees. October saw that figure increase dramatically to 48 companies letting go of 496 workers, UDN says. A large portion of the October layoffs are due to the “collapse” of Resonac. It looks like there will be further impacts on November figures (when they come out) as the news sources say Resonac is cutting staff in three waves and is fully closing its Hsinchu factory which used to employ nearly 600.
While it isn’t good to hear of layoffs, on a positive note the source reports say that businesses at Hsinchu Science Park as a whole employs 3,602 more staff than this time last year (an annual increase of 2%). In total there were 572 manufacturers in the science park at the end of October 2023 – seven more companies than a year ago. So, not all tech segments are faring so badly as HDDs.
Readers are probably not very surprised to hear that the HDD industry and its supporting companies aren’t thriving in 2023. The growth in popularity of SSDs, with ever-more attractive price per GB figures and their compelling performance in compact form factors, has been significant over the last year or two.
Increased SSD competitiveness in the mainstream market resulted in HDD shipments collapsing -43% YoY for Seagate and WD, we noted in a report earlier this year. Perhaps the referenced HDD shipment figures make things look worse than they are, though, as the decline could be characterized as part of a wider tech hardware shipment malaise in 2022/3. Moreover, some see continued strong demand for HDDs for data centers for years to come.
