The growing demand for MP3 players, mobile phones and the upcoming iPad launch is expected to give a significant boost for the NAND flash market, especially for low capacity SSD modules in 2010.
The market for NAND flash memory, which is mainly used to store data in mobile handsets, portable music players and other consumer electronic devices, will likely be ignited by demand from tablet computing devices and low-capacity solid-state drives (SSD) designed for low-cost netbooks and dual-drive desktop PCs, according to industry sources.
The sources have noted that there is potential for Apple’s upcoming iPad to buoy the NAND flash market in 2010. Launch of iPad-like devices is also to help boost demand for NAND flash in 2010, and further stabilize the chip’s price trend.
Source: DigiTimes.
This news is not really surprising considering that most people generally only use tablet and mini-laptop computers for surfing and as portable video players, where 30GB to 60GB of storage is sufficient. For the limited performance Atom based computers, SSDs can help a lot to compensate the slower processing performance. Obviously an SSD will not help in areas that are CPU intensive such as watching video.
Even for a heavy multitasking desktop user, an entry level SSD can help a lot when used as the boot drive, since a 30GB drive would easily hold the OS and the most frequently used software, while other content such as the user profile and files can be stored on a separate hard disk.
