Technova

Flash Drives to Challenge Hard Disks for Laptops

A new study by market research firm In-Stat concludes that Flash-based solid state drives (SSD) will pose a real challenge to traditional hard disk drives found in portable laptop computers.

"The HDD industry has done a phenomenal job of driving areal densities; however, it is clear that there are user segments for which drive capacities far exceed the user's need," said Frank Dickson, In-Stat analyst. "When one examines the declining cost trends for Flash, the user's need for storage and the premium that consumers place on the benefits provided by SSDs, it is easy to see that there will be a clear demand for SSDs."

In-Stats research has led them to believe that Flash-based drives could make up 50 percent of the market share in mobile computers by 2013.

Of all the benefits users get with Flash-based drives, respondents to In-Stats survey singled out power savings as the most important. With this in mind, two-thirds of the respondents also said they would be willing to pay more for the drives than they are currently paying for hard disk drives.