What is behind recent SSD price drops?

[thebski]

I've noticed many of the popular SSD's getting considerably cheaper in the past couple months. This morning Newegg had the 120gb M4 on sale for like $170 and I noticed the Vertex 3 has dropped to $200. Is this a product of technological maturity or is something bigger and better around the corner like a new round of SSD's from all of our favorite companies?

I ask this because I am going to be building a new computer sometime in the next 1-4 months (really waiting to find out more info on SB-E) and want to know if I should expect to be able to get a couple 120gb SSD's under $200 or if this just means that something else is coming. Just curious as to everyone's opinion.

 

[beenthere]

More competition and a move to faster controllers. The price of memory chips has also dropped as there is a glut on the market. 120 GB. SSDs might get close to $200 but I doubt they will go below that until the next gen is released in'12.

 

[JohnnyLucky]

I maintain the ssd database listed in the stickies at the top of this ssd section of the forum. Recently I added half a dozen new players. Most of them are second tier companies. I also need to add two brand new start-up companies, Strontium and MX Technology. I'll probably do it on saturday.

We also have more releases coming. Sometime between October 1st and the end of the year Intel will be releasing 3 new ssd series, 330, 520, and a business enterprise series. The 520 series is supposed to be for gamers and enthusiasts. In addition there will be a 330P which will be PCI-e based. Samsung recently announced they will be releasing a new SATA 3.0 6Gb/s ssd as a follow-up to their popular 470 series.

 

[cadder]

My theory is that the OCZ's and M4's have suffered bad publicity due to their poor reliability record and sellers have to drop the prices in order to sell the product.

 

[JohnnyLucky]

cadder - You're right about the bad publicity. OCZ took the biggest hits. Got so bad they even got hit in mainstream newspaper reports. On the other hand it is not that surprising. If you go over to newegg and take a look at the ssd section you'll see that OCZ offers 80 solid state drives in a variety of models, configurations, and capacities. Nobody else comes close to that. Currently the closest competitor with 33 ssd's is Kingston followed by Intel with 30 ssd's and Corsair with 26.

 

[Ubrales]

Looks like they are getting prepared for a pre Black Friday sale which is less than 3 months away. (No more holidays, no more special sale after Labor Day this weekend).