Competitive Field Widens As Majors Enter SSD Market

October 20, 2010

Recent advances in controller and error correction software are expected to increase the adoption of solid-state drives and bring down costs, a senior research analyst at Noble Financial Group says.

Micron (MU), Anobit, Fusion-io and Pliant Technology … have made significant improvement in what are called three-bit cells,” Mark Miller said. “These developments should increase adoption of SSDs into tier-zero applications.”

Although more than 100 firms market SSDs, the low barriers to market entry have left the competitive landscape especially active, with major companies, such as Intel (INTC), Samsung (005935), Toshiba (6502), Seagate (STX), Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) and Western Digital (WDC), entering or expected to enter the enterprise SSD space.

“Couple these issues with the enterprise storage world moving away from Fibre Channel, which STEC (STEC) dominates, and investors will have to be very careful about being caught up in irrational exuberance about this space,” Miller said.