I've been informally tracking internal client SSD retail price trends since the beginning of 2013, and now for most of 2014. Early on I noticed that patient end users, who could take the time to compare various price promotions from several popular online retailers, certainly would be the wiser to shop around since SSD sales promotions vary by brand and capacity point.
At the start of 2013, I noted the "top-rated" and "highest reviewed" client SSDs listed online offered pricing at a low promotional retail cost $0.76 ~ $0.681 per gigabyte (GB) and over time tracked the cost per GB down to $0.69 ~ $0.65 by the end of 20132 . That's arguably a 10% decline for special promotion retail pricing during that timeframe, by my simple records.
Even with a well-known fire in South Korea that affected total NAND production, there should be no disagreement that the market did experience client SSD price declines during 2013. So I was interested to see what would happen during 2014, especially with market analyst and proponents3,4 predicting a variety of pricing scenarios for the year early on.
End users must have been really encouraged at the very beginning of 2014 with online retail promotions citing SSDs at $0.58 ~ $0.505 per GB. By mid-year, I noted promotions offering SSDs at $0.47 ~ $0.396 per GB, and I've recently seen a $0.35 per GB advertisement for a 480GB SSD – granted I realize the larger capacity point SSDs aren't considered a mainstream product at this time.
So far, it doesn't seem as though concerns for limited NAND flash production nor the costs to scale down NAND flash processes are holding client SSD retail pricing from crossing a significant threshold this year. If anything, end users will have their own opinion of what a "good value" threshold is and for where SSD pricing needs to reach before upgrading their computing system for increased performance and productivity. From what I can see, the latest client SSD pricing trend is sure to support the technology's continued adoption rate within mobile computing devices.
1As seen on 250GB & 256GB capacity points from different manufacturers.
2As seen on 240GB & 480GB capacity points from different manufacturers.
3 Solid state drives grow in popularity, price might not drop in 2014, Michael Hatamoto, http://www.tweaktown.com/news/34951/solid-state-drives-grow-in-popularity-price-might-not-drop-in-2014/index.html
4NAND Flash Revenue to Grow by 13% Y/Y to $28 Billion in 2014, DRAMeXchange, http://www.storagenewsletter.com/rubriques/market-reportsresearch/nand-flash-revenue-to-grow-by-13-yy-to-28-billion-in-2014-dramexchange/
5As seen on 120GB & 240GB capacity points from different manufacturers.
6As seen on 128GB & 256GB capacity points from different manufacturers.
Disclaimer
The views and opinions expressed in this blog are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of Toshiba America Electronic Components, Inc.