Flash memory prices to slash by year end

Friday, August 27, 2010

Flash memory prices to slash by year end

To resurrect the dying market of SSDs, flash memory prices could drop to a dollar a gigabyte by the year end. However, iSuppli states that even this measure is not enough to kindle resurgence in SSDs.

At the start of the year, the prices were just over $2 for 1GB of standard NAND flash memory. This has reduced as much to reach $1.20 for a dense three-bit-per-cell chip by the fall and may get to just $1 by the end of 2010.

Although it is anticipated that the reduction in prices clubbed with enough stock may boost the interest for SSDs, analysts at iSuppli think otherwise.

They reason that hard drives have grown rapidly since 2008 and are low cost enough that the gap may be too wide for SSDs to recover. This observation roots from the fact that now internal drives normally top out at 2TB where SSDs approaching 1TB cost over $1,000 and often need large enclosures.

For flash to make its grip in the market stronger, prices need to reach as low as 40 cents per 1GB by 2012. At that price, an SSD with a practical, formatted 100GB of space would cost about $50. An overall drop in flash memory prices would likely help determine the capacities of many handheld devices, especially Apple's iPads, iPhones and iPods.