Flash price rise to hit SSD, says report

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The rise in price of NAND Flash will lead to a further increase in the price of solid state disks (SSD), according to a report released this week.

Research firm iSuppli claimed that the price hike will damage the industry’s move towards SSD storage technology in notebook PCs.

Michael Yang, senior analyst for mobile and emerging memories at iSuppli, said: "The recent increase in NAND flash pricing has benefited memory chip makers, but also has served as a major damper on the market for SSDs used in notebooks."

"About 90 per cent of an SSD’s value consists of NAND flash memory, so with the pricing for such chips rising, consumer and corporate adoption of solid-state storage has been slowed."

The average price of a 16Gb density Multi-Level Cell NAND flash rose from $1.80 in the fourth quarter of 2008 to $4.10 in the second quarter of 2009, an increase of 127.8 per cent.

The report blamed the rise on NAND flash suppliers cutting capacity in 2008 to reflect the lack of demand in the market. This meant prices rose while sales still stayed low.

SSD is one of the most widely talked about technologies in the industry today. EMC claimed it will change the face of the industry along with rumours that Samsung will drop HDD entirely for SSD. Companies like Seagate are also promising to release SSD products in the future.

The one thing that has always held it back though is the higher price point which, if iSuppli is right, is set to increase again.

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