Over the past few years, the prices of mainstream solid state drives (SSDs) has plummeted, which has lead to a drive in manufacturers adopting the storage media for laptops. But the price of SSDs is expected to increase across 2017 and into 2018.
The growth in the SSD market has followed the typical path for emerging technologies – high prices and limited specs when first introduced, with prices coming down as the manufacturing becomes more efficient and demand increases. This has certainly been true in the case of the SSD, with prices decreasing dramatically in recent years. But the SSD has, in a way, fallen victim to its own success.
A shortage of NAND flash chips – where SSDs store data – is expected to make SSDs more expensive. This has been exacerbated by the transition from 2D/Planar to denser 3D NAND technology. The denser 3D manufacturing process requires more steps than 2D NAND does, and manufacturers haven’t yet found a cost-effective way to produce these new flash chips at a volume that meets the rising demand of SSDs.
SSD vendors across the board are increasing their prices between 5% and 10% in response to the component shortages. But despite the price increases, and despite SSD data recovery being more difficult than HDD data recovery, flash storage is still becoming more and more prevalent. And for businesses in particular, going all-flash is cheaper in the long run due to lower running costs.
