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Solid-state drive (SSD) storage has conquered the laptop market to such an extent that hard disk drives (HDDs) are dying out, according to new research by IT market intelligence company Context.

In the fourth quarter of 2019 the volume of HDD PCs — notebooks, desktops and workstations — sold through the Western European IT distribution channel fell to 9.4%.

Based on the speed of adoption of SSDs, Context’s latest report predicts that by the end of 2020 no new laptop sold in Western Europe will have HDD as the primary storage component — and the desktop segment is likely to follow in 2021.

Figures show that 93.3% of new laptops sold in the fourth quarter of 2019 had SSDs as their primary storage component, up from 66.7% at the end of 2017.

SSDs are also increasingly being used in desktops, with the proportion of new devices using them reaching 82% at the end of 2019, compared with 48.5% in 2017.

Northern European countries are leading the way, with only about 2% of laptops and desktops in the Nordics and the Netherlands coming with HDD storage by the end of 2019, followed by Germany (6.6%) and the UK (9.9%).

The transition is slower in Southern Europe, where an average of 85% of PCs sold at the end of 2019 came with SSDs.

“The sharp fall in price per gigabyte observed in 2019 is the main driver of accelerating SSD adoption as it enables vendors to sell SSD configurations at competitive prices,” explained Gurvan Meyer, business enterprise analyst at Context.

“Meanwhile, online storage services are getting cheaper, and the use of streaming online services more common, so there is less need for high-capacity local storage. Vendors can therefore sell models with less storage and this, too, is supporting the transition towards SSDs.

“And, last but not least, the majority of consumers have now experienced the advantages that SSDs bring to day-to-day computer use so are happy to pay a little more for a machine with this type of storage.”

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