Kingston Technology's shipments of low-priced solid-state drives (SSD) have nearly reached 30,000 units so far this month, according to industry sources. Along with Intel's push of its recently-launched 'affordable' SSD series, the market for low-capacity SSD used for dual-drive desktop PCs is expected to heat up, the sources believe.
Kingston has responded by claiming its 30GB SSD is more price-friendly than Intel's 40GB drive, as it looks to differentiate its own market niche. Kingston said sales of the device have been better than expected, without disclosing figures.
Kingston earlier this year launched the SSDNow V Series 30GB Boot Drive, priced at around US$100. The company pointed out that the drive is designed to be used in conjunction with an existing hard-disk drive (HDD). "A PC OS and key applications reside on the SSD while all data such as documents, music, files and photos remain on the HDD," the company said in a January 6 press release.
Intel recently announced its X25-V Value SATA SSD, targeting value netbooks and dual-drive/boot drive desktop set-ups. Priced at US$125, the SSD is to offer users the performance and reliability advantages of solid-state computing at an affordable price, Intel said.
The Intel X25-V features 40GB of 34nm NAND flash memory, whereas Kingston's SSDNow V Series 30GB Boot Drive uses Toshiba 43nm MLC NAND flash.