Reports: Roomy, Speedy SSDs Gaining Attention Amid Benefit Declining NAND Flash Prices

Over the past several quarters, SSD prices have been in freefall, and they are expected to continue this trend for at least another few quarters, according to recent reports. Industry watchers reportedly believe that these aggressive price reductions in the SSD market will convince customers to buy higher-capacity or higher-performance SSDs, or both.

Downward Pressure On 512GB/1TB SSDs

This week, analyst DRAMeXchange released research saying device makers are putting higher downward pricing pressure on 512GB/1TB SSDs, as they try to increase the “content-per-box.” This should lead to a higher adoption of SSDs in notebooks, as most of them have been stuck with ~256GB SSDs over the past few years, DRAMeXchange believes. 

DRAMeXchange also said that when it comes to the enterprise SSD market, "demand for server/data centers is the only major demand on the rise in 2019. With a higher gross profit than other products, enterprise SSDs have become the Holy Grail companies vie for."

"Suppliers have all set their sights on PCIe products, which have plenty of room for growth and even more opportunities for competition," the analyst said. "Contract prices shall continue to fall in the aftermath."

NVMe SSDs to Represent Half of the SSD Market

The sales of high-speed NVMe SSDs are expected to reach 50 percent of the total SSD market by the end of 2019, according to a recent DigiTimes report. Unnamed industry experts told the publication that SSDs' fast price decline will lead many consumers to switch to the much higher-performance NVMe SSDs in 2019.

The price of NVMe SSDs fell 11 percent in Q1 2019, while the price of SATA SSDs fell by only 9 percent, DigiTimes said, citing its anonymous sources. The price difference per GB was 30 percent on average in 2018 but will continue to shrink throughout the year, it added. 

Notebook makers are also seen as one of the main customer segments for NVMe SSDs, but these high-performance flash drives are also expected to see adoption for cloud computing, 5G, as well as automotive applications.