LOS ALTOS, USA: SSDs (solid-state drives), long touted as an HDD replacement, are too costly today and have not yet posed a real threat to HDDs, according to a TrendFOCUS report, "FOCUS ON: Solid State Drives."

According to the report, over 50 million HDDs could be replaced by SSDs within a few years.

"Midway through 2008, despite all the hype, there has been little effect on demand for HDDs," stated John Chen, Senior Director and TrendFOCUS' SSD team leader. "But as flash costs fall and SSD designs improve, the battle between HDDs and SSDs for market leadership will last for years."

Two HDD market segments are exposed to future SSD incursion, enterprise and mobile PCs. SSDs in enterprise systems and servers achieve high IOPS at low power consumption. Due to the high displacement ratio of one SSD to multiple HDDs, a modest penetration of SSDs as forecasted may cause enterprise HDD growth to peak within four years. HDDs will not be completely displaced from enterprise systems as higher capacity, cheaper HDDs will still be needed.

"SSD invasion of the notebook PC space would have a profound effect on the HDD market," added Chen. Notebook PCs used in the corporate environment and a new class of low-cost, minimal function entry-level notebooks typically need lower storage capacities and are therefore a target market for SSDs.

SSDs can cost 10 times more per gigabyte than HDDs, so the price premium must fall dramatically. "Early-generation SSDs have not wowed users, prices are too high and performance advantages have been minimal. However, the maturation of SSD designs and controllers along with a clear NAND flash development roadmap lays the foundation for SSDs to be a mainstream mass storage device. With aggressive adoption, we could see the HDD market erode by well over 50 million units yearly by 2012," added Chen.