SSD predictions at CES: fewer OEMs, lower prices

SSD predictions at CES: fewer OEMs, lower prices:

A Samsung 840 SSD will still be quite current after CES.

The Tech Report

Storage enthusiasts sitting on the edge of your seats for revolutionary SSD announcements out of this year's CES can rest easy: there's not anything mind-blowing coming up that you need to be worried about. Ars sat down today with both LSI/Sandforce and Samsung, and while both had plenty of neat stuff to talk about with regard to their current product line, neither had anything earthshaking to share. Like the headline says, this isn't necessarily a bad thing: now's an excellent time to buy an SSD if you don't already have one, and the ever-present enthusiast fear of buying something that will soon be obsolete or out of date isn't one that really applies for solid state disks.
Kent Smith, the senior director of product marketing for the Flash Components Division of LSI (which makes the enthusiast-friendly Sandforce SSD controllers featured in many consumer SSDs) noted that business has been quite brisk, with Sandforce controllers appearing in many, many different OEMs' drives. Kent compared the situation today to the hard disk drive market twenty years ago, with a plethora of manufacturers producing only moderately differentiated disks. But there are only two real HDD OEMs today: Seagate and Western Digital (or three, depending on how one counts Toshiba). Anyone can use Sandforce controllers in their disks, but the sheer number of OEMs making SSDs is unsustainable, and some collapse and consolidation is inevitable.
The reasons why tie in with NAND flash's much-discussed longevity issues. SSD prices themselves are low and will get lower, but the vast majority of SSD makers aren't actually manufacturing their own NAND, but rather sourcing it from one of several manufacturers. NAND's increasing density and complexity brings with it integration issues—as NAND gets smaller and more cantankerous, it can be more difficult for an OEM who sources both NAND and controllers and melds the two together to make drives. The OEMS that can dedicate the most time to it will produce fast and power-efficient devices, while others will be pushed out of the market by decreasing costs and decreasing margins.

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