The entirety of Western Digital’s 2026 hard drive output is already sold to data centers and won’t have consumer stock until at least 2027
Thanks to data center demands, Western Digital has committed all of its HDDs for at least the rest of the year.
WD makes more money selling drives to data centers that then lease you the storage as a subscription
I don’t think there’s enough coordination and cooperation for this to be a ‘force people to rely on cloud storage’ conspiracy buuuut i do think all the players involved are smart enough to know that’s what’s going to happen and have no reason to stop it
Plus, with WD specifically, it’s 7 customers. Not 7 retailers, but 7 corporate consumers. Imagine being a company with close to a $100 billion market cap and for the next fiscal year you have to only deal with 7 clients. Why on earth would you prioritize consumer sales when you’ve got these dream clients beating down your door
Your next PC upgrade might be a subscription
idk it may have started as an accident but i wouldn't for a second believe they're not actively shooting for that now
I also try not the engage in "this has always been the plan" type thinking. But the second that SaaS proved to be profitable, the moment Adobe proved that you can hold software hostage for a monthly fee by changing the contract and license and people will stick with it because the switching costs are too high, this was the logical conclusion. I don't believe in a shadowy cabal sitting in smoky rooms planning out every detail of the economy half a century in advance, but I do believe in the rent-seeking pressures of the private ownership economy and in the willingness of those in power to just keep pushing a little more each year to see what they can get away with.





















