Fearless Forecasts for the Solid State Disk Market
By Joanne De Peralta, BiTMICRO Networks, Inc.
In the latest report published by Web-Feet Research, several factors were cited to be the key drivers in pushing the SSD market’s growth in the next four years. These include the proliferation of Multi- Level Cell technology, the continuous increase in market share by enterprise storage users and the growing demand for embedded flash drives.
Joanne De Peralta, BiTMICRO Networks, Inc.
By Joanne De Peralta, BiTMICRO Networks, Inc.
In the latest report published by Web-Feet Research (Solid State Drives Markets and Applications Quarterly Series for 1Q 2008 and Embedded Flash Drives: 2008-2012), several factors were cited to be the key drivers in pushing the SSD market’s growth in the next four years.These include the proliferation of Multi- Level Cell (MLC) technology, the continuous increase in market share by enterprise storage users and the growing demand for embedded flash drives. Among the many factors affecting SSDs’ performance in the storage market, these three drivers were singled out to be the most influential in its growth and is expected to impact SSDs’ market value and positioning by 2012.
MLC Technology
Multi-level Cell (MLC) flash memory technology by itself offers some disadvantages such as slower transfer speeds, higher power consumption, and lower write endurance compared with its single level cell counterpart. So why is it expected to propel SSD technology to the top of the market? MLC memory offers lower manufacturing costs, and cost is a prime issue when comparing SSDs against conventional hard drives. The issue of cost, together with falling flash memory prices, can definitely keep the price parity tight. But putting the issue of price aside, MLC also offers a bigger capacity, allowing the storage of three or more bits in each cell.
This makes it possible for SSD makers to produce smaller form factor SSDs to fit industrial, embedded and consumer electronics requirements without sacrificing its design. Web-Feet Research reports an overall SSD revenue growth that is expected to reach $11.7 billion in 2012. According to the report, “SSD unit and revenue growth will be driven heavily by low cost PCs from OLPC, Asus’s EEE PC, Intel’s Classmate and others along with the rapid adoption of SSDs in notebook PCs. MLC technology for SSDs will eventually be adopted as the standard design-in for these platforms due to MLC technologies’ better value proposition.”
Enterprise Market
Aside from the MLC technology, the continuous adoption of SSD by the enterprise market is also expected to drive unit growth and revenue within the next four years. The same report forecasts “enterprise unit and revenue growth will continue to be healthy as SSD unit prices continue to decline over the forecast period. SSD revenue growth is expected to be 34.4% year over year”. They mentioned though the reality that despite the projected increase in SSD deployment and usage in enterprise applications, the SSD sector’s total contribution compared to the overall HDD enterprise storage will remain to be a fraction of the total storage market for the forecast period.
Embedded Flash Drives
The factor that will have the most impact on SSD market growth is the widespread use of Embedded Flash Drives (EFDs). Web-Feet Research pointed out that overall revenue growth for the EFD market is expected to reach $6.2B in 2012 as a result of intensive EFD deployment in various electronic devices such as high-end mobile handsets, portable media players, digital camcorders, GPs navigation devices, and digital radio. Moreover, Flash cache has been widely adopted in notebook PCs. Web-Feet’s industry forecasts shows how analysts see the route that will be taken over the next few years. These factors are seen to fuel the SSD market’s growth until these solid-state devices become the conventional storage solution for the consumer and enterprise markets. For industry players like BiTMICRO, this market information, together with a lot of testing and validation, forms part of a rigid research and development project to keep its product roadmap on the right track. One thing remains sure though, SSD is here to stay until a better solution starts to challenge it.
Joanne De Peralta is currently with the Marketing Communications Team of BiTMICRO Networks, Inc, (BitMICRO). Joanne is handling international press relations and events to promote the company’s products and services to its target market. Prior to BiTMICRO, she worked for Canon as a Marketing Officer for its video and consumables group.
For details on BiTMicro's product offerings, check out: BiTMicro
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