Toshiba: The Notebook's Future Is Flash And SSD
The President of Toshiba, Shozo Saito, delivered a fascinating look at near future of solid-state memory last week. He's in a position to know about NAND flash memory and Solid State Drives, and the future not only looks bright, it looks like the future is right now. He predicted one-quarter of notebook PCs will have a solid state drive within three years.
Toshiba cited notebook PCs as the most likely market where demand for NAND flash memory will strengthen. The global market for SSD for notebook PCs will expand 313% every year from 2008 to 2011, the company said.
Toshiba is planning to extend its SSD lineup, which currently ranges from 32 to 128 Gbytes, up to 512 Gbytes in the future. Saito is considering the compartmentalization of SSDs for 512 Gbytes or less and HDDs for more in the market for memories used in notebook PCs. He also predicted products with built-in SSD to account for 10% of all notebook PCs in 2010 and 25% in 2011.
He also predicted a precipitous drop in the cost of SSDs that would make them competitive with HDDs, with prices being lowered as much as 50% year over year.
Toshiba cited notebook PCs as the most likely market where demand for NAND flash memory will strengthen. The global market for SSD for notebook PCs will expand 313% every year from 2008 to 2011, the company said.
Toshiba is planning to extend its SSD lineup, which currently ranges from 32 to 128 Gbytes, up to 512 Gbytes in the future. Saito is considering the compartmentalization of SSDs for 512 Gbytes or less and HDDs for more in the market for memories used in notebook PCs. He also predicted products with built-in SSD to account for 10% of all notebook PCs in 2010 and 25% in 2011.
He also predicted a precipitous drop in the cost of SSDs that would make them competitive with HDDs, with prices being lowered as much as 50% year over year.
