Troubled times are upon the IT industry, or at least the storage segment, but Kingston thinks at least one type of storage device is in for good things starting next year, 2012.
The solid state drive market could reach its green pastures, so to speak, in about nine or ten months.
Though NAND Flash memory isn't all that affordable now, it definitely isn't going to stay so expensive forever.
After all, that would be counterproductive, particularly when it would prevent the solid state drive market from taking advantage of a certain opportunity.
In an unfortunate turn of irony, hard disk drives are going to be suffering from shortages for a while, because of the Thai floods that closed factories.
With this having already double or tripled prices of such storage units (at worst), it was easy for makers of SSDs to think this is their time.
Kingston believes this as well, though there is one condition that needs to be met, and in a timely fashion.
According to at least one report, the company believes average pricing of 1 GB NAND chips will drop to $1 (0.75 Euro).
It is then that SSDs will finally have all they need to reduce the price gap between themselves and HDDs that they will truly become a replacement rather than an alternative.
Major flash chip makers will advance to 19mm manufacturing process technologies, which will be the primary cause behind the higher affordability.
There will also be more entry-level and mid-range models, not just high-end and enterprise devices or supposedly mainstream SSDs that still dry wallets wherever they go.
Based on the words Digitimes attributes to Nathan Su, flash memory sales director of Kingston APAC, the time of SSDs will arrive in the third quarter of 2012.
Not all news about HDDs is so bleak though, and prices are expected to start falling back next month (December, 2011), so overcoming the price gap could turn out to be more difficult for SSDs than Kingston believes.
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