Report: SSD Market Revenues Will More Than Double in 2013
The SSD market is expected to equal 40-percent of the HDD market by 2016.
As both SSD prices and form factors get smaller, it's no surprise that SSD market revenue will more than double in 2013. In this year alone, worldwide shipments are expected to reach 83 million units sold, up from 39 million in 2012. By 2016, per-year shipments should reach 239 million units, equaling 40-percent of the HDD market.
According to an IHS iSuppli Storage Space Market Brief from information and analytics provider IHS, the increase in 2013 will be the result of renewed "Ultrabook hopes" as Intel's form factor is expected to pick up steam thanks to Windows 8, Intel's Haswell architecture, and cheaper touchscreen technology.
"The fate of the SSD business is closely tied to the market for Ultrabooks and other ultrathin PCs that use cache drives," said Ryan Chien, analyst for memory and storage at IHS. "While SSD shipments rose by 124 percent last year, growth actually fell short of expectations because ultrabook sales faltered due to poor marketing, high prices and a lack of appealing features. However, if sales of the new generation of ultrabooks take off this year as expected, the SSD market is set for robust growth."
Also driving SSD market growth in 2013 will be a reduction in the average price of NAND flash memory, the firm said. Not only are the lower prices attracting "deal-seeking consumer enthusiasts," but manufacturers who were previously reluctant to install the once-costly alternative to the typical HDD. Even the enterprise sector is flocking to SSDs thanks to rising capacities, cheaper prices and superior performance.
"As NAND rides out variable cost and scale curves in ever-more efficient manufacturing processes, such things as solid-state PCs, servers and storage arrays become more achievable and attainable," the firm said on Wednesday. "Recent developments around nonvolatile memories like STT-RAM and resistive RAM also hint at sustained performance improvements for SSDs beyond the drives’ current use of NAND flash memory."
The SSD data presented in IHS iSuppli's latest report covers traditional solid state drives in both the consumer and enterprise segments, as well as cache SSDs used to help speed up super-thin form factors using HDDs for storage and program installations.
Increase of mobility wants, droping $/gb ratio as well as more stable and reliable drives being pushed out.
Well, You will be missing out. I had a SSD that been running 2 years strong and no problems. It has been so worth it. I always tell people that the problems with most computers is that they don't have a SSD.
Agreed. I paid over $250 for my 120GB Vertex 2 just about two and a half years ago and not only don't regret it, I consider it money well spent.
Consumer HDDs usually have a head crash, motor failure, or some other mechanical failure long by the time current SSDs wear out.
I'd rather have a gradually slowing SSD than a sudden HDD failure anyways.
Do you plan on using the same computer for many decades?
If you said this back in 08/09 time frame, people might agreed with you....
Although in this day in age, SSD can really handle the a lot of stuff now and the number of reasons for not having an SSD is getting smaller as the years go by.
In 09, most people recommend only most frequently used programs (that didn't write a lot) and the OS to be on the drive. (didn't help that affordable ssd's were only like 16/32GB in size and the only one you could trust was Intel....)
Now, there getting large enough that they can handle (a decent amount of) games, and other programs that write a decent amount and these have been lasting for at least 2 to 3 without any major signs of slowing/wearing down.
When they hit 5 to 6 year's, your probably already looking at something new so it wont really matter to much if it heavily slowed down (which even for hdd, after 5 years, most people looking for a new drive to run at least the OS. )
Heck, about the only reasons not to have an SSD is pretty much specific to the task you need and most of the task that I can think of is not really limited to the the write cycle of the ssd. The main limit is the drive capacity.
Which even that reason is starting to get smaller. About 2 years ago, 120GB was $200 to 300. Now, you can get one for $100. Watch in the next year or 2 when 256GB's will be in that range.
Waiting for write cycle to reach your expectation is not a valid excuse for the majority of people anymore.
Unless you run a specific program that writes a ton to the drive, most likely a drive will last at least 3 to 5 years before needing a change (for the common person, the drives will last longer than that).
Amen to that! +1
SSDs have about as much write endurance as a typical HDD, what tends to die is the controller, not the nand, and if you buy a good quality drive then that is not much of an issue.
Also, with every successive generation of SSDs write endurance goes DOWN not up. Moving to TLC, and smaller dies only makes it harder to write more information, so you are going to have to wait an awfully looooooong time before you are going to see those kinds of writes available. And as stated before, you don't get that kind of write endurance even on consumer and pro-sumer HDDs anyways.
The best you can do is get a drive that is slightly bigger than your needs and you will not have an issue running through writes. Use the SSD as your OS/Program disc, and if you have something that has some heavy writes then buy a cheap SSD specifically for that purpose and just burn through it. If you are doing something that write intensive then you should be paid enough that the extra productivity provided by an SSD will more than pay for the material costs.
Sucks for you, I like that Adobe Premere opens in 5 secconds instead of 50+
Strange, in recent weeks in the UK it seems like SSD prices have
been rising. For example, the Samsung 830 256GB dropped as low as
130 UKP, but now it's typically more like 150 to 160. Likewise,
similar 'quality' SSDs (Vertex4, that sort of thing) all appear to
have risen a bit, while what had been a steady decline in 60/64GB
and 120/128GB prices last autumn has ground to a halt or reversed.
I wonder, are companies not bothering to drop prices at the moment
because they simply don't need to? ie. the demand is there to soak
up products at current prices.
I also notice that supplies of older products dry up suspiciously
fast when newer models come out. I want to buy a couple of 830 256s,
they're more than enough for me, yet in just the space of barely a
month since the 840 launch it appears numerous sites now list the
830 as "discontinued", or just no longer in stock with no expected
restock date, or the price has gone way up to 175+.
I tried looking at 64/64GB models this week. Some sites suddenly
have very few available, or a narrow brand choice, and the prices
are barely any less than 120/128 models, eg. 62 UKP for a 64GB vs.
80 UKP for the 128GB quivalent - very silly.
To me this smells like the beginning of the proverbial supply &
demand effect kicking in as regards pricing, a bit like the way
normal HDD makers have reliased they don't need to sell 1TB disks
as cheap as they did before the Thai floods (I remember getting
some for only 36 each at one point). If this is indeed the year of
a huge surge in demand for SSDs, then we may not see that much of
a move on pricing in absolute terms at all. Either that or, as new
models come out, they will simply replace older models at the same
price points while stocks of older models quickly vanish via
controlled supply, instead of one at least being able to buy older
models for less for a while.
I've done a lot of SSD price hunting this past week. It really does
feel quite different to what was happening to prices about 3 or 4
months ago. Many sites just have a whole list of products which are
not in stock, or with weird/inconsistent pricing (or both).
Anyone notice this elsewhere? Or is it just the UK?
A good example of how annoying this can be is when considering an
SSD upgrade for an older system that just has SATA2. My own tests
show that newer SATA3 models offer little extra in performance (for
obvious reasons) than older models which are perhaps more optimised
for SATA2 links. Thus, for example, upgrading my gf's PC, I've been
looking for a 120GB Vertex2E as it works nicely on SATA2 systems,
but it's either not available now, or the prices are crazy, eg. on
one site the V2E 120GB is 75, vs. just 80 for a Samsung 840. Surely
the V2E should be much less by now. One may as well buy a Sandisk
Extreme or Agility3 (I'd rather not; I like the V2Es). By contrast,
just a few weeks ago I was able to buy some V2E 120s for 52 each, a
price which seems a lot more logical given the current product range.
I was hoping good model 240/256GB prices would drop below 100 UKP
before the Spring, but if demand is indeed going up a lot then I
can't see that happening. Pity.
My price searches typically cover about 30+ different UK suppliers,
and not just the most well known such as Scan, Aria, DABS, etc. Others
include (ie. sites I trust, in no particular order) Ballicom, techdna,
trustedhardware, Microdirect, tekheads, lambdatek, novatech (the source
of my V2E/120 splash a while ago), ebuyer (source of the 830 256s when
they'd dropped to 130 UKP), Amazon (source for some V2E 120 MAX IOPS
when they dropped to only 80 each), overclock.co.uk, technextday,
ikatek, CCL, Eclipse, Redstore, etc. NB: make good use of Google if you
find a company you've not heard of before; check trustpilot, webutation,
and other sites that have meta-info & reviews about online shopping
sites (search for the web site name with words such as 'review',
'rating', 'scam', 'trusted', etc.)
Ian.
I have a bunch of ~10 years old consumer-grade drives (mostly Maxtor and WD) that are still in working order after 50000+ (over 5 years worth) power-on hours... most of those were from back when standard warranties were 5-years.
All my failed drives died somewhere between the first year and second year mark. None of those that have made it beyond that have failed yet and that includes a misbalanced Seagate drive that sounds like a lawnmower which I never expected to survive more than a few days before self-destructing from excessive vibrations.
Google published a paper about HDD failures across their computer park that comes to a similar conclusion: drives that are destined to fail will usually fail early (first year or so), the rest will most likely last for a long while as long as exposure to vibrations and temperatures outside the 25-40C range is minimized. The most reliable indicator of impending failure they have found is reallocated sector count where drives tend to have substantially higher failure rates over the next few months from the first remapped sector.
My 11 year old desktop's no-brand 32 GB HDD still works.
Though for obvious reasons, we don't use the desktop much anymore. An 11" laptop that my dad bought a few months ago is superior to the old desktop in every way possible, except for being a worse paper weight (lol).
*yawn*
I have 549MB SCSI disks still working after 20 years.
though I'm not sure about my 20MB doorstop SCSI drive... (measures 9" x 6" x 3.5") Really ought
to test it sometime, would be a giggle if it's still ok after almost 30 years.
Ian.
85$ for a 128GB Plextor M5, best money ever spent on a computer upgrade.
I purchased my Vertex for 200$ and I thought it was a steal at that time >