Solid state drives, a critical component in many thin, high storage-density mobile devices, could see dramatic price drops in the coming months due to a burgeoning price war among the major SSD suppliers. According to DigiTimes, industry sources in Taiwan are indicating that large suppliers are preparing to drop prices on SSDs precipitously.
The price drop would come as part of a move to push smaller SSD suppliers out of the market, as the leading SSD producers are rumored to be concerned that inferior drives produced by smaller players could stall development of the SSD market. Cutting prices, then, would lower margins to the point where only the larger players could survive. DigiTimes’ sources name Kingston Technology, Intel, OCZ, and Crucial as the firms looking to lower SSD prices. So far, none of the manufacturers has commented on the rumor.
Additionally, the price drop could aid the drive makers in pushing adoption of the new Serial Advanced Technology Attachment standard, SATA3. SATA3 allows for more compact, higher speed drives, and a faster transition to the standard could see baseline storage capacities in SSD-based devices increase from the current 32GB and 64GB to 128GB and 256GB. SATA3-based drives are already available, but the major drive manufacturers hope to accelerate adoption of the standard even more.
