The price of SSDs is continuing to drop, and they're becoming an ever-more tempting proposition compared to traditional spinning disks, according to a new report.
DRAMeXchange, which is a division of analyst firm TrendForce, produces a quarterly report detailing the prices PC vendors pay for SSDs, and it showed that both MLC-based and TLC-based SSDs dropped considerably in price.
MLC-based drives dropped by around 10 to 12%, and TLC-based SSD prices sank by 7 to 12% in the first quarter of 2016.
DRAMeXchange observes that this means that right now, a 128GB SSD costs almost exactly the same as a 500GB hard disk – there will be less than a $3 price difference between these drives in 2016.
And the price difference between a 256GB SSD and a 1TB hard drive will also shrink to under $7 (less than a fiver) before the end of this year.
Laptop boost
The analyst firm also noted that it expects the amount of SSDs used in laptops to increase over the course of 2016, with the adoption rate expected to rise to 30-31% (compared to 25-26% in the final quarter of last year).
It further observed that Samsung is set to carry on its market domination throughout 2016, leveraging the price advantage it has due to the mass production of SSDs using 3D-NAND flash.
DRAMeXchange noted: "[Samsung] will focus on migrating to 3D NAND-Flash production to reduce costs. Other SSDs makers – SanDisk, Liteon, Toshiba and SK Hynix – will try to catch up to Samsung by stepping up shipments of 15nm/16nm TLC products that offer higher margins."
Incidentally, we saw some interesting SSD research from Google earlier this week, which made some startling observations including the fact that it's the age of the SSD, and not the amount of usage the drive has seen, which determines failure rates.
Via: IT World
