Select Language:
Although China’s hard drive storage industry faces challenges from international tech giants’ barriers and intense domestic price wars, the rapid growth in demand driven by artificial intelligence applications is creating new opportunities for Chinese companies to establish a global leadership position, a senior executive at a major Chinese tech company recently shared.
“The local market consumes nearly 60 billion CNY (about $8.3 billion) worth of hard drives annually,” explained Zhou Yuefeng, who also oversees the cloud computing division and heads the data storage product line. Despite this robust demand, domestic firms still lack essential core technologies and sufficient manufacturing capacity, which puts China at a disadvantage whenever global supply chains experience disruptions.
“Without breakthrough innovations in materials, manufacturing equipment, and production processes, China’s hard drive sector will continue to lag behind in the global supply chain,” Zhou emphasized.
However, the rise of AI is opening up new avenues, Zhou indicated. Increased investments in AI data infrastructure and the growing need for long-term data storage are fueling consistent growth in demand for advanced storage solutions. This presents an opportunity for Chinese storage manufacturers to catch up with international leaders.
“In the past, IT systems primarily needed high-speed processors. Now, in the AI era, systems must also manage enormous data processing and transmission volumes,” Zhou noted. “Even leading tech giants are working to enhance their capabilities to process massive data sets in parallel. Developing high-bandwidth, high-performance storage products will be crucial for new players aiming to compete globally.”
He added, “A smart individual not only needs quick thinking but also a strong memory. Similarly, AI storage systems must integrate data storage and processing into a collaborative system to work efficiently.”
Advancing Intelligent Data Platforms
Zhou stressed the importance of Chinese tech firms investing more in the storage sector. He believes future hard drives will evolve from mere “data warehouses” to intelligent platforms enhanced with AI capabilities.
A new AI-focused storage device is set to be launched early next year, integrating features such as inference acceleration and knowledge-base management. Zhou emphasized, “Future storage solutions must provide high reliability and availability, supporting AI training and inference directly.”
He suggested that Chinese storage companies need to accelerate innovation centered on AI, resolve technological challenges, and develop a complete industrial ecosystem.
China still has significant work ahead to achieve “storage independence,” Zhou said. Cross-industry collaboration is essential to accelerate technological advancements and reach that milestone sooner.
“With the shift from digitalization to intelligent data, the importance of data is increasing, and the market for hard drive storage will continue to grow,” Zhou concluded.
ChatGPT
Perplexity
Gemini AI
Grok AI
