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4 Semi Kings Joust for 1 Crown... who's going to win?
Zsolt Kerekes,
editor - StorageSearch.com
- May 4, 2010 |
A reader asked me a
good question "Between Intel and Samsung do you see one of them emerging as
a better player than the other?"
I didn't have an immediate
answer. But I had been thinking about writing an article on this very subject.
Here it is.
4 Semi Kings want to be SSD-REX
Intel, Samsung, SanDisk and Toshiba have each
publicly stated their intentions (recorded at various times in our
news pages) to become the
#1 leading company in the SSD
market (measured by revenue).
There's a lot to play for in this
phase of the SSD market
bubble but that's peanuts compared to the feast yet to come. All memory
makers will be impacted by the SSD market - when it heads towards being a $100
billion / year market at the close of this decade. But a lot can change
between now and then - so despite what the
analysts might
report about today's SSD market share the SSD revenue of these 4 companies
today is almost irrelevant in determining their future
success. (Some of the biggest future
product
segments for SSDs don't even exist yet - except as blue sky plans.)
In
this article -
Seeking SSD Rex - I
examine the relative SSD strengths and weaknesses of these 4 companies and
I'll discuss what it takes to breed a future SSD tyrannosaurus.
Unlike
the hugely popular long running series -
the top SSD oems
(which is based on empirical data) the new article is an opinion piece - which
will use marketing and technical judgements to extrapolate trends from what
we know today.
The ultimate goal for any SSD Rex of the future will
be to establish their own style of architecture as the standard which
works best in their chosen market application segments.
That idea of
SSD architecture leadership extends to the point where
server designers
and
notebook PC
designers change the way they design their products to fit in with the
architectural roadmaps proposed by the SSD market leaders. And when users
accept those models and learn to anticipate and buy succeeding compatible
product generations without asking too many questions (a business concept proven
by 50 years of CPU
history ).
Do any of these
chip companies have what it
takes?
If not - how can they get there?
Or will a fabless
SSD company beat them all to it?
See also:- storage market research,
spinning down to HDD's
market retirement,
popular SSD
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