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AS the contract price of mainstream SSDs continue to fall, TrendForce says increasing numbers of notebook manufacturers will use SSDs in their products.
According to the TrendForce statistics, SSD adoption by notebooks may hit 30 percent in 2016, as the contract price of mainstream SSDs fell 10 percent for four straight quarters.
Compared to the previous quarter, the average contract price of mainstream PC-Client OEM SSDs has fallen by 10 to 11 percent in the fourth quarter of 2015. This marks the fourth straight time that the SSD price decline has exceed 10 percent.
This drop in prices means SSDs continue to be increasingly attractive to consumers as their prices come down.
TrendForce DRAMeXchange division Senior Manager Alan Chen said 256GB SSDs will be moving close to price parity with mainstream HDDs in 2016, so the adoption of SSDs in the business notebook segment will rise. DRAMeXchange anticipates the next year’s SSD adoption rate in the notebook market will rise above 30 percent for the first time.
However, the market for notebooks continue to be lower than expected, which will limit SSD adoption in the market.
TrendForce expects the prices to keep dropping, as NAND Flash suppliers seek to consumer more capacity and gain market share by maintaining their aggressive pricing strategy.
In terms of SSD product strategy, Samsung will continue to use the price advantage that it has with its 3D TLC-SSD and DRAM-less SSDs as to acquire more PC-OEM market share. However, SanDisk is quickly catching up to Samsung and has started mass production of its own lines of TLC-SSD and DRAM-less products since the middle of this year.
Other SSD manufacturers are rolling out products carrying 15nm/16nm-based MLC Flash in response to the aggressive pricing of NAND Flash memory. Chen noted that the price war in the NAND Flash market will continue into the first half of 2016 as major NAND Flash suppliers will work hard to consume capacity and capture market share.