Solid State Disk Market Outlook

This report takes an exhaustive look at the Solid-State Disk (SSD) markets for notebook & desktop PCs, the enterprise, and other applications with technical information, market dynamics, a forecast, and a competitive analysis of 28 noteworthy SSD makers. Read this to understand users' wants and needs, the competitive landscape, and market drivers.

Additional Information

SSDs roared into the market nearly a half decade ago, and since that time have not materialized as anticipated. Why have SSDs not replaced more HDDs? When will SSDs reach an inflection point? How will other technologies impact the success of SSDs? What impact will SSDs have on the NAND and the HDD markets?

This expanded update to our earlier SSD report answers these and other important questions by taking an exhaustive look at the Solid-State Disk (SSD) markets for notebook and desktop PCs, data centers, and the many other SSD applications including military and industrial, providing technical information, market dynamics, a forecast, and a competitive analysis of 28 important SSD makers. Read this to understand users' wants and needs, the competitive landscape, and market drivers.

The study's rigorous approach clarifies key points and success factors to help readers understand the opportunities as well as the pitfalls that await all participants.

This 128-page study is based upon exhaustive interviews with buyers and sellers of SSDs, as well as their suppliers and other key players in the market. A full 25 figures and 43 tables bring clarity to the technology, the market, the participants, and the outcome.

All sides of the SSD equation are covered including important market drivers and cost analysis history and projections, along with information from makers of HDDs about their plans to counter any market share loss threatened by the advent of the SSD. It looks into every aspect of the SSD market - market sizing, PC vs Industrial/Military markets, forecasts by application, company-by-company competitive analysis, key user surveys, etc.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Now that it has been heating up for five years the SSD market should have been significantly larger than it now is according to most forecasts. Some of this perception has to do with the fact that the market has been receiving a significant amount of attention over the past year.

Objective Analysis has once again compiled an in-depth study of this market. The pages of this report contain the findings of that study.

Objective Analysis has found:

• The SSD market is closely following Objective Analysis conservative 2007 forecast: SSD sales into notebook PCs will reach $7 billion by 2015
• The combined SSD market for all segments will exceed $14 billion by 2015.
• Roughly 170 companies now participate in the SSD market. Twenty eight of these companies are profiled in this report.
• No other SSD market has the potential of reaching the volumes of SSDs in notebook PCs. With very low penetration this could still become a $1 billion market as soon as 2014. With a more optimistic view the market could surpass $39 billion by that time.
• SSDs’ impact on the HDD market will be limited. Our forecast estimates that SSD unit shipments will decrease HDD unit shipments into the PC market (roughly 1/3 of the entire HDD business) in 2015 by 21%, or 115 million units.
• The SSD will increase NAND chip shipments, but not as much as NAND manufacturers once hoped.
• Certain new technologies threaten the notebook PC SSD market and could keep it from materializing. These include the Hybrid HDD and other means of adding NAND to the PC, like Intel’s Turbo Memory or Braidwood products.
• Users are intrigued by SSDs but are reluctant to pay 20 times as much for the same amount of storage, or ten times as much for one third the storage of an HDD.
• Since HDD price per gigabyte declines at a rate similar to that of NAND SSDs will not approach the price of capacity HDDs over the term of our forecast.
• As always, customers will continue to demand increasing HDD capacities in their PCs, as. It is unlikely that HDDs in notebooks will ever see the kind of conversion from HDD to NAND that occurred in the MP3 player market.
• Even with the modest assumptions made in this report, a small penetration of very low capacity SSDs will still account for more gigabyte shipments in 2015 than the entire NAND market of 2011.