Analyst: iPod, Zune, servers to drive SSD growth

Solid-state drives may see heady growth despite a sliding world economy, according to a report released Tuesday by a market research company. Devices like the Apple iPod and iPhone are expected to drive growth.

Micron Technology along with its partner Intel are challenging SSD market leaders Samsung and Toshiba, In-Stat said

(Credit: Micron)

Flash memory revenue in the solid-state drive segment will see compound annual growth rates of over 100 percent through 2012, according to market research firm In-Stat. The type of flash used in solid-state drives is referred to as NAND flash.

"You're starting from quite a small base. Back in 2006, you're in the tens of millions (of dollars) kind of a number. By 2012, you're easily over five billion. So the growth rates do get rather high," said Ian Lao, a senior analyst at Scottsdale, Ariz.-based In-Stat. The market researcher forecasts compound annual growth at 106 percent from 2006 through 2012, Lao said.

In the consumer segment, Lao says he expects to see most of the growth in small devices like portable music players and smart phones. Music players such as the Apple iPod and Microsoft Zune will adopt solid-state drives instead of the tiny 1.8-inch hard disk drives they use now because of better durability and shock resistance. "They suffer the risk of, hey, I just dropped my Zune, it doesn't work anymore," Lao said. SSDs will provide much greater reliability, he said.

And as smart phones become more PC-like, they will graduate from relatively simple flash drives to more sophisticated SSDs with the same Serial ATA (SATA) interfaces used in PCs today, Lao said. An iPhone, for example, with a more computer-like operating system and features would use an SSD, Lao said.

Future ultra-portable laptops, represented today by the MacBook Air and HP Voodoo Envy 133, will also drive SSD growth, as will Netbooks.

Sharp growth will also be seen in the corporate enterprise market. SSDs will, in an increasing number of cases, replace very-high-speed hard disk drives in server environments, Lao said.

Flash drives (non-SSD) will remain widely used in various music players, mobile handsets, after-market cards, and USB flash drives, with a combined market share of more than 80 percent during the next couple of years, according to the report. However, this percentage will drop to about 70 percent by 2012, as SSDs grow in importance, the report said.

Worldwide NAND flash revenues are likely to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 29.7 percent from 2007 to 2012 to reach $61 billion, In-Stat said. Revenues for NOR flash--used, for example, to store program code in cell phones--will increase at a 6 percent compound annual growth rate from 2007 through 2012.

[Hep Cat]

I don't know about this. SSD is much more expensive per megabyte than hard disks of the same capacity; the only thing you'd gain for a PMP device is energy efficiency and size; speed is a moot point when you're reading even 512kbps files.

[BigGuns149]

Energy efficiency and size do matter though for PMPs. This is why HDD based players are almost gone entirely. Save for the iPod classic there aren't many HDD based players on the market anymore. Sandisk, which is one of the largest vendors after Apple doesn't sell any HDD based players. The general trend has been away from HDDs for that reason.<br /><br />Your point about price per GiB is more pertinent on comparing SSDs to desktop drives than it is in comparing SSDs to microdrives. The price gap has became so small for microdrives that even a lot of vendors selling cheap players have stopped making HDD players.

[fjerome]

brooke, r u nutz? zune won't be around in a year. it won't drive nada.

[MaLvaDo39]

Zune won't drive a thing. It's insane to have it in the same sentence as an iPod or any server.

[BigGuns149]

Considering the recent news that Zune sales have fallen ~50% in the last year I have to agree that the Zune isn't going to be much of a factor. Due to the better access times I think we will see a lot of uptake in the server market and to a lesser degree the enthusiast market.<br /><br /> We will probably see some dramatic uptake in SSDs in the 1.8" form factor, but not as much in the 2.5" form factor except in the enterprise space where people covet their performance. We will eventually see a big uptake in the general consumer laptop market, but I don't think we will see big growth in the wider general consumer market until at least next year when prices per GiB are 50-80% lower and for the general consumer market it might take later than that depending upon how quickly the economy recovers.

[Waam]

nice plug for zune? this is journalism at its worst.

[hometeam360]

You're right... with the exception of the iPhone &#38; iTouch, iPod can't touch the features of ANY of the Zune models.

[texzen1]

MaLvaDo39 says it perfectly. Who are you trying to fool?<br /><br />If you want to punish or insult someone, buy them a Zune.

[alex-cnet]

It true that Zune sales are low and that they wont drive SSD sales, but that does NOT mean the Zune is a terrible product. Many think of them as better than regular iPods. And yes, people still buy non touch iPods (meaning there is a market for the current Zune lineup).<br /><br />Its fallacies like this that need to be kept in check. Just because something is not as popular, on any level, does not mean it is inferior.