Solid State Drive (SSD) makers including Intel and Adata Technology have been gradually dropping their SSD price since early in the second half of 2010 by about 10-15% in the hopes of increasing the market penetration rate. However, hard drive makers on the other hand, have seen their prices increase in the fourth quarter.
NAND flash prices continues to drop and players including Micron, Intel, Samsung Electronics, Toshiba and Hynix are advancing into developing 20nm processes, and the related price drops of SSDs should stimulate demand for the year-end holidays.
However, since SSD pricing is currently still 10 times higher than traditional hard drive prices, sales will still be constrained. Meanwhile, hard drive makers Seagate, Western Digital, Toshiba and Hitachi GST are all reducing their capacity in the fourth quarter, so prices of hard drives have recently started to climb with 500GB models even seeing 4-5% prices rises.