SSD penetration drops to about 10pc in 09

TAIPEI, TAIWAN: DRAMeXchange estimates Shipment for Low Cost PC in 2009 will reach 22.7M. However, SSD penetration rate in Low Cost PC market dropped from 70 percent in 1H08, 18 percent in 2H08 to roughly 10 percent. DRAMeXchange estimates that the NAND flash Q408 demand will be under expectation and slow season effect will last until 1Q09.

Q4 is expected to be the traditional high season for NAND Flash related applications. However, downstream vendors became conservative about pulling in inventory for the year since end of October and has kept inventory at a two-week market visibility

The high expectation of the SSD demand on low cost PC will become slow due to the previous Microsoft announcement, which had loosen the limit of HDD capacity on low cost PC from 80GB to 160GB. Currently the price gap between SSD and HDD is still large. Price per GB of MLC SSD is about $4 to $5 USD, which is far higher than $0.5 USD of HDD.

Therefore, the chance of SSD to enjoy rapid growth is very small in short term. Now the SSD is only adopted on very few high end NB PC with 64GB SSD, like Lenovo Think Pad X300 priced at $3,200 or SONY VAIO Z27 priced at $2,800. Due to price gap, potential market seems limited.

Shipment for Low Cost PC in 2009 will double and is estimated to reach 22.7M. However, SSD will not benefit from this rapid growing market. ASUS’s 7’’ Eee PC played important role in Low Cost PC market in 1H08. SSD shared over 70 percent of Low Cost PC market at the same time. Acer later replaced SSD with HDD in 2H08, and this has reshaped the market. Other PC makers, like DELL or HP have also adopted HDD as their storage device. SSD penetration rate in Low Cost PC market dropped from 70 percent in 1H08, 18 percent in 2H08 to roughly 10 percent, said DRAMeXchange.

The main reason is that most PC OEMs have doubts about the SSD in the standard NB PC market, whether in price, reliability, or durability and under the trend of low price demand, HDD will still be the main stream storage device on NB PC in the next two to three years.

For the outlook of 2009, the NAND Flash market will still face oversupply due to weak demand, reduction effect hasn’t appeared, and lack of killer application in the market. DRAMeXchange estimates that the Q408 demand will be under expectation and slow season effect will last until 1Q09.