Kioxia Says Cheap 1TB SSDs Are History As Storage Production Sells Out
As Willie Nelson once said, "Turn out the lights, the party's over, they say that all good things must end." Those lyrics date all the way back to the 1950s, and so it's safe to say he was not referring to solid state drive (SSD) storage. He might as well have been, though, because now Kioxia is singing the same tune about the days of cheap SSDs having come to end, at least for now.
We'll give you three guesses as to why, though by this point, you should only need one. Here's a hint: artificial intelligence. We've already seen AI-driven demand for NAND flash memory chips wreak havoc on consumer DRAM prices, but it's not stopping there. Storage is next and to some extent, it's already happening. The implication for consumers is that dirt cheap SSDs are becoming increasingly rare.
During a meeting at the Nine Tree Premier Locus Hotel in Yongsan-gu, Seoul, the managing direct of Kioxia's Memory Business Unit, Shunsuke Nakato, provided a sobering update on storage production.
"To be honest, this year's production volume is already sold out," Nakato said, according to Digital Daily.
Some outlets are attributing a broader quote to Nakato in which he supposedly added, "The days of cheap 1TB SSDs for around 7,000 [Japanese] Yen are over."
We're not seeing that quote in the original report, though it's possible that it's a result of something being lost in machine translation. To put that figure into context, 7,000 Japanese Yen is equivalent to around $45 in U.S. currency.
It's been a minute since we've storage go for that low, though at one point that was about the going rate for a budget 1TB drive. Back in January of 2024, for example, we highlighted in a storage deals roundup a 1TB WD Blue SN850 SSD that was on sale for $54.99, which at the time was an 8% discount. We've also routinely found 2TB SSDs selling for around and sometimes even under $100.
That is no longer the case. If you can find a 1TB SSD for around $50 or 2TB for around $100, snatch it up. Here's what current pricing looks like in our quick scan of the landscape (NVMe models)...
- 2TB Samsung 990 Evo Plus: $239.99 (versus all-time low of $116.99)
- 2TB Crucial P310: $191.99 (versus all-time low of $93.99)
- 1TB Crucial P310: $106.99 (versus all-time low of $59.99)
Those are some of the least expensive models we could find, and even going with off-brand SKUs doesn't offer much in the way of comparative savings. So yes, the party's over. The bigger question is, however, for how long?
"There is a sense of crisis that companies will be left behind the moment they stop investing in AI, so they have no choice but to continue investing. Although there are risk factors such as the U.S. power shortage and foundry supply constraints, NAND demand itself will not decrease next year," Nakato is quoted as saying.
