Are Hard Disk Drives Facing Extinction?

A report released today claims that Solid State Drives (SSD) could reach as much as 50% of the mobile PC market by 2013.

You can now buy a 2GB SD memory card for well under 100 dollars, so it should come as no surprise to hear that Solid State Drives (flash based) will eventually be picking up steam in the mobile PC market. Research firm In-Stat says that figure could reach 50% percent of the market by the year 2013. The company surveyed 389 mobile computer users and researched the current trends in Flash development to come to this conclusion.

“The HDD industry has done a phenomenal job of driving areal densities; however, it is clear that there are user segments for which drive capacities far exceed the user’s need,” says Frank Dickson, In-Stat analyst. “When one examines the declining cost trends for Flash, the user’s need for storage and the premium that consumers place on the benefits provided by SSDs, it is easy to see that there will be a clear demand for SSDs.”

In-Stat’s research revealed that people would likely pay a higher price for a more reliable and faster hard drive based on solid-state memory, however power savings topped the consumer wish-list as to why they would want a SSD based PC.

SSD are picking up steam in several markets including mobile phones, media players, thumb drives among others. Samsung announced in May this year that they developed a 16GB solid state drive with power consumption of less than five percent of today’s hard disk drives (HDD).