Samsung Sets The Record Straight On Future SSD Storage Plans

Are we about to lose another NAND flash brand in the consumer storage space? Following Micron's decision to pull its 29-year-old Crucial brand from the consumer market to focus on higher margin data center clients, rumors began to swirl that Samsung was getting ready to stop selling SATA-based solid state drive (SSDs) to consumers. According to Samsung, however, it's fake news.

The rumor traces to Moore's Law Is Dead, a popular (and some would say controversial) leaker on YouTube, who claimed to have heard from one of his "best sources in distribution" that Samsung is planning to announce in January that it was "ending SATA SSD production at some point in the next couple of years and halting sales of SATA SSDs to new customers" without outstanding contracts waiting to be filled.

This sparked a flurry of reactionary headlines, one of which called it "another blow" to gamers on the PC platform, considering that PC gamers are already having to deal with ballooning DRAM costs. If you've priced a kit of DDR5 memory recently, then you know how bad the situation is for DIY system builders. Likewise, multiple companies have issued imminent price hike warnings, with some like Maingear advising customers to "consider shopping now" before it happens.

Losing a SATA brand wouldn't be the death knell that some headlines are making it out to be, though it could have a ripple effect. More over, if Samsung also decided to pull out of the consumer storage market altogether (which is not something MLID claims), including NVMe drives, then it actually could be a devastating blow. Fortunately, that's not on the agenda.

"The rumor regarding the phasing out of Samsung SATA or other SSDs is false," a Samsung spokesperson said in a statement to WCCFTech.

MLID did caveat that the rumored phase out he heard about could happen anytime in the next two years, so if you're looking at the situation through a pessimistic lens, you might be inclined to think we're not out of the woods yet. However, Samsung's statement is clear that the rumor itself is false, not the timing. Samsung also went a step further by clarifying that it's not planning to phase out "other SSDs" either, in addition to SATA.

So there you have—while there is plenty to be concerned about in the current landscape, losing Samsung as a consumer SSD brand is not one them.