Intel, Crucial, others rumored to trigger SSD price war

[DJ aka GDR DJ]

Solid state drives, a critical component in many thin, high-density storage mobile devices, could see dramatic price drops in the coming months due to a burgeoning price was among the major SSD suppliers. According to DigiTimes, Taiwan industry sourcesin Indicating that are large suppliers are preparing to drop prices on SSDs precipitously.

 

The price drop would come as part of a move to push smaller suppliers out of the SSD market, as the leading producers are rumored SSD to be concerned that inferior drives produced by smaller players could stall development of the SSD market. Cutting prices, then, would lower margins to the point where only the larger players could survive. DigiTimes' sources name Kingston, Intel, OCZ, and Crucial as the firms looking to lower SSD prices. So far, none of the manufacturers has commented on the rumor.

 

Additionally, the price drop could aid the drive makers in pushing adoption of the new Serial Advanced Technology Attachment standard, SATA3. Allows for more compact SATA3, higher speed drives, and a faster transition to the standard baseline could see storage capacities in SSD-based devices increase from the current 32GB and 64GB to 128GB and 256GB. SATA3-based drives are already available, but the major drive manufacturers hope to accelerate adoption of the standard even more.

 

source

[Darketch]

This is good news, but it drives me crazy. I have the sneaking suspicion that hardware manufacturers have already created the technology to provide mass storage and could release 1TB SSDs but their business models are intentionally slow to nickel and dime consumers....but yes, good news indeed.

[Chuckun]

@Darketch - you're absolutely right.. There's no doubt about that. I guess their reasoning is why release the best if you can get everyone to buy the worst, then the slight improvement, then the next improvement, before letting them buy the real deal?

 

I love the idea of SSD's decreasing in price, but only because it will in turn make standard discs a lot cheaper.. I doubt I'll ever be able to afford SSDs.

[TulsaGeoff]

SSD's have already dropped significantly to about $1 a gigabyte. 3 years ago a Intel 80gb was $250. It is good news.

[Medic Kane]

Ahh a price war

[Moron4]

@Darketch - you're absolutely right.. There's no doubt about that. I guess their reasoning is why release the best if you can get everyone to buy the worst, then the slight improvement, then the next improvement, before letting them buy the real deal?

 

I love the idea of SSD's decreasing in price, but only because it will in turn make standard discs a lot cheaper.. I doubt I'll ever be able to afford SSDs.

 

Welcome to capitalism *sigh*

[Ferretpaint]

It would be nice to be able to have an affordable ssd, the price has been the only thing holding me back from buying one.

[Rabidraccoon]

The way to get into the SSDs is to not use them for mass storage. Put in a SSD as a primary drive and load the OS on it and maybe COD4. The storage can remain as the cheaper HDD. That way you can get away with a 80GB SSD.

[rolf]

@Tulsa:

That's merely a result of technological improvements, similar as we always have. 20 years ago we bought a 386 CPU, now we are about 1000 faster. However, I noticed too that we're currently at about 1 euro per GB which is a great breakthrough. Not for 1TB data, but most computer addicts used to spend -without problem- 150 euro for a WD Raptor (74GB), these days you can get a decent SSD for that which is perfectly capable of storing your OS and a few games

 

@Rabid:

80GB is sufficient, but you don't keep a lot of spare space; I really suggest these days (with Windows 7) that you'd take 120GB. I just reinstalled, and got about 60GB filled already. And 80GB is 75GB in practice, and you really want to keep a bit spare.

 

@Chuck:

I guess you'll be able to buy SSD's eventually, unless you're dead in 5 years. In my geeky network I don't know many without a SSD, and outside that network they start to realize that SSD's are the future. Of course, the price is the problem, but many also start to realize that they don't need 1TB of data, and a 'small' SSD works just as well.

 

Anyway, thanks to this awesome improvement I've just bought my third solid state disk (Samsung 830 256GB, the Intel 520 wouldn't be worth the extra 20%). I have a X25-m 80GB in my server, I had another X25-m 80GB in my laptop which was full (and, obviously, 80GB SSD and 24GB memory is a little off balance ) and now the awesome 256GB. Now I have to check what I will do with my old 80GB, shame my old laptop only has room for 1.8" SSDs